


Answering Prayers

by Gabrielle



Series: Answering Prayers [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 09:21:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 38,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3129341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabrielle/pseuds/Gabrielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*Set in the summer between Seasons 2 and 3 of BTVS* Looking for answers about her daughter, Joyce heads for Angel's mansion... and finds answers she never expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Answering Prayers (Chapter One)  
  
  
  
Joyce isn’t sure exactly why she’s here – or why she didn’t turn back any of the three times she got lost trying to find this place – but here she is. She’s at the large, dilapidated house Willow referred to as ‘The Mansion.’ The name is accurate, she supposes, but there’s nothing very Gatsby about it and that’s still Joyce’s benchmark for the term, all the ‘McMansions’ sprouting up like weeds all over the suburbs notwithstanding; though she must admit that at least this place has spacious grounds, unlike the lot-line-to-lot-line monstrosities she’d fled to live in what she once naively believed was one of the last affordable, pure, wholesome cities in California.   
  
Sunnydale. What a name for a town that seems to give new meaning to the term ‘nightlife.’   
  
Explain to her again why she hadn’t chosen Sierra Madre? There were dozens of artists living there, great gallery space, and a charming home in the foothills that, if she had resigned herself to never again buying herself a pair of shoes anywhere but Payless, she could have just managed to afford. Oh, that’s right – the school district was lousy and her idealistic hippie side hadn’t wanted to be one of ‘those’ people who sent their children to private schools.  
  
Right now, she’d give anything to go back in time, bite the bullet, and send Buffy to Flintridge Prep.  
  
One foot in front of the other, she edges slowly down the crumbling steps toward the entry, almost melodramatically slow and careful, clutching the stake she found under Buffy’s bed. She’s been told that Angel’s been gone since the night that Buffy ran away, but are there other vampires here? Willow said something about creatures called ‘minions’ and Joyce’s eyes dart frantically, even as she realizes she has no idea what she’s looking for.  
  
She should have asked Willow more questions, though she probably asked her a thousand the past few nights over tears and cocoa, trying belatedly to understand a daughter she isn’t sure she ever knew… a daughter she might never _get_ to know… a daughter who’s gone.  
  
Her only child – her baby – is gone.   
  
Unbidden, tears fill her eyes. Why is she even here?  
  
She knows why she’s here.  
  
This is the place her daughter was. This is the place where – according to Willow – Buffy fought Angel to save the world.  
  
Why? Why did it have to be Buffy? No one asked her – no one asked _her_! She’s Buffy’s mother, damn it, and there are laws about child labour and about permission and this Slayer thing isn’t… the tears have become sobs as she stands in the doorway, looking in, wondering… wondering.  
  
Her sobs quiet sooner than they should, because she’s a mother and a divorcee and she’s used to reining in difficult emotions so that they won’t upset her child, make her want to live with her father instead. She thinks now, though, that maybe that was a mistake. Was she too perfect? Is that why Buffy hadn’t…  
  
Flashback to a ‘treatment center’ and now she collapses. That’s why Buffy wouldn’t tell her… _couldn’t_ tell her. She was terrified that Mommy would lock her up again in that terrible place… that place for crazy people.  
  
Buffy isn’t crazy.  
  
Buffy was never crazy.  
  
There _are_ vampires and demons and … oh my god, there was one in her kitchen drinking cocoa right where Willow sat last night and… Yes, her daughter had sex with one.  
  
Her Buffy, her baby… slept with a monster. Slept with a real monster who lost his soul because of it and she must have been so hurt and so scared and she couldn’t come to Joyce with any of it. She had to carry that pain all by herself.   
  
What kind of horrible mother has Joyce been?  
  
Can she handle the truth?  
  
Getting up, she brushes the dirt from her legs and tries not to think about what might be in that dirt – Willow’s babbling inevitably veered into what the kids call TMI – as she makes her way into the house.  
  
She looks around. If she were watching a movie or a TV show about vampires, this is exactly what their lair would look like. It’s almost too stereotypical and she wants to chide Angel for his lack of imagination. The part of her that once wanted to _be_ the artists whose work she now sells wonders why a vampire with centuries of experience and travel and knowledge couldn’t have bought himself a smart little pied-a-terre with gleaming modern fittings and lavishly comfortable furniture… oh, and a fine collection of art, as well.   
  
Another flashback, this time to something she found in Buffy’s room – a sketch with an elaborate A for a signature – and she wonders: Is Angel an artist?  
  
Willow says he has his soul back, that the spell she cast… Oh dear. Willow. The girl she’s thought of almost as another daughter, Buffy’s best friend, the shy girl with the eager grin… she’s something different too, something that can cast spells and restore souls to dead, evil things.   
  
Is anything what it appears to be in this town? Mr. Giles isn’t really a librarian, Willow isn’t really an awkward schoolgirl, Buffy isn’t really…  
  
But she is! No matter what name those people who forced her to be this Chosen Person call her, Buffy was, is, and will always be first and foremost Joyce’s baby and all she wants is the chance to hold her little girl close and tell her that, to tell her that she’s sorry, that she’s not perfect and she was scared and she lashed out, but she didn’t mean it and… why won’t she just come home so Mommy can fix it? Whatever ‘it’ is.  
  
Where is she? Where is Buffy?  
  
It suddenly occurs to Joyce to wonder… what if she’s here? What if she’s hiding out in this place? Holed up with some food and clothes and terrified that Joyce is too angry at her for it to be okay for her to go home.   
  
That’s a very real possibility and Joyce’s heart leaps with the hope that maybe, just maybe, she’s found her child. Still, she needs to be careful… and quiet. So she makes her way cautiously further into the house, looking around, trying to see if there are any signs of life.  
  
She goes upstairs, tiptoes, looks in every room, but aside from dust and dank and… a wheelchair (?), she finds nothing, certainly nothing to show that anyone, even a Slayer, has been living here for the past few weeks. With a heart now heavier than it was before, she trudges back down to the main room, her eyes once again full of tears.  
  
Joyce doesn’t pray, or at least she hasn’t in a long time, but as close as she’s come to it, she’s closer than that now, hands clasped, eyes heavenward as she hopes something good and wise and powerful is listening to the plea of a desperate mother: “Buffy,” she says softly, “if there’s something… some way I could show you that it’s okay, that you can come home, if there’s some way to make you _want_ to come home.”  
  
Suddenly she hears a noise and she jumps back as a blindingly-bright beam of light shines on the hearth. She pulls the stake out of her purse as the light fades and…  
  
Oh god! It’s Angel. It’s Angel and he’s...   
  
Why is he naked? Where did he come from?   
  
And wherever it is, could Buffy be there now?  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	2. Chapter 2

Answering Prayers (Chapter Two)  
  
  
  
There’s a naked man lying on the floor right in front of her and Joyce is paralyzed. Where did he come from and what is she supposed to do? Is she in danger? He’s still a vampire, right? She flips through her memory, trying to think of everything Willow told her about Angel. Yes, he’s still a vampire, but he has a soul and theoretically that should mean she’s not at risk of becoming lunch.  
  
Still, she’s not putting this stake down anytime soon.   
  
He isn’t getting up. Why isn’t he…? You know, now that she thinks about that, she’s actually glad since she has already seen much more of her daughter’s ex-boyfriend than she ever should have and the full frontal view is something she’d prefer to avoid. “I… I’ll go get you some clothes,” she says as she awkwardly edges around him and hurries back to the staircase. His clothes should be in one of the bedrooms, probably the master since, according to Willow, he was the head honcho or whatever you call it with vampires.  
  
Why didn’t she ask him about Buffy?  
  
She can do that once he’s dressed, so she rifles through the dresser drawers in the largest and most lavish bedroom and comes up with a pair of… black silk pajama bottoms. No matching top. Is there at least a robe or something? But there isn’t, at least not one near at hand and frankly, Joyce is too eager to get back downstairs and start asking questions to waste time rummaging through the closet in search of more clothing. The pants will cover the most important parts and that’s all that matters. If Angel wants to be more modest, he can dress himself later.  
  
She all but races to the room where Angel is and she’s surprised that he’s in exactly the same position he was when she left, though admittedly grateful since she’s at least not seeing anything new. “Angel?” she says, softly and gently because it occurs to her that antagonizing a recently-evil vampire would probably not be her smartest move ever, “I brought you something to wear.”   
  
Something must be wrong with him because he doesn’t even look up at her. He’s craning his neck, staring at the hearth as if searching for something, but he still isn’t getting up and she suddenly realizes that he looks thinner than she remembers…and weak.   
  
On the one hand, that’s good, since she’s _not_ a Slayer and she’s not sure that even with a stake she could kill a vampire by herself if he suddenly attacked, but on the other hand… she’s a compassionate person by nature and concern kicks in automatically. “Do you need something?” she asks, waiting for an answer that never comes. He still hasn’t said a word. She tries again. “Are you hungry?”  
  
The response to that is a turn of his head toward her at last… accompanied by a flash of gold in his eyes and a brief blur of ridges on a face she’d once thought was handsome; she can’t stop herself from starting and taking two or three hasty backward steps. “I… I’ll take that as a yes.” She’s guessing what she just saw was what Willow alternately called a ‘game face’ and ‘vamping out.’ It’s scary in a way that calls to the instinct to flee from footsteps behind you when you’re walking alone. It’s the reminder that there are things out there in the darkness that you’d rather never see.  
  
It’s further proof that her daughter is something unlike any other girl anywhere.  
  
How did she give birth to someone who could face these things… who could _love_ one of them?  
  
And then she remembers Spike and how nice she thought - _thinks_ , if she’s honest – he was and she wonders if she’s the tree from which this apple fell after all.  
  
None of these thoughts are practical or helpful, two qualities which would serve her well right now, so she harkens back to Willow’s babble, because Angel is hungry and… didn’t Willow mention something about a bar? A bar for vampires? Gilly’s or Billy’s or… Willy’s! That’s it! Willy’s. Okay. _That_ is something practical. That’s knowledge she can use. “Can you get up?” she asks, deciding to worry less about seeing what she has, after all, seen on other men and more about getting him to this Willy’s place so he can eat something… something that isn’t her or some innocent stranger.   
  
He struggles, but can’t seem to manage, and, leaving the pants on a chair and resigning herself to having to touch him, Joyce goes to him and tries to help him stand. Unfortunately, he’s dead weight and he quickly collapses… taking her with him. “Ouch! Damn it!” Her leg hurts like heck, especially the knee she’s sure is at least severely bruised after its hard contact with bare stone.  
  
She struggles to get up and that’s when she notices… okay. He’s big.   
  
No, that’s not something she ever wanted to know, but somehow she doesn’t blush – maybe because he seems so completely innocent of the fact that he’s stark naked and that makes this all seem a lot less like a dirty joke than it would otherwise.  
  
He seems more than innocent… he seems fragile and terrified and disoriented. He still hasn’t spoken and she wonders strangely if he remembers how.  
  
Where did he come from?  
  
She knows that she should call Willow and have her bring Mr. Giles here to handle this and leave Angel in their hands. That’s the sensible, intelligent, rational thing to do… but she isn’t going to do it. Maybe it’s just her bitterness and anger, but she doesn’t trust Mr. Giles as far as she can throw him, and she knows that even if she were to beg her, Willow couldn’t be counted on to keep secrets from the teacher Joyce knows she has a crush on – she’s not completely oblivious to the workings of teenage hormones, even if she did miss her daughter becoming a Slayer – so what that means is…  
  
Oh god. She’s going to do this. She’s going to try to find this Willy’s Bar and buy blood and take care of a vampire and she’s going to do it all on her own.  
  
It occurs to her that she’s doing exactly what Buffy would do if she were here and tears form as she realizes that now, in this moment, she knows her daughter for the first time.  
  
Drawing in a deep breath and letting it out, she belatedly notices a throw lying on the couch and she fetches it to cover Angel. As she tucks it around him solicitously, she starts to tell him, “I’m going…” but she doesn’t finish the sentence because he grabs her hand, looking for all the world like a child afraid of the dark. The irony that he’s the creature children fear is lurking there isn’t lost on her, but it fades into the background as she tries to soothe him. “I’ll be right back,” she reassures him. “I’m just going to get you… food. Then you won’t be hungry anymore.” She smiles and touches his cheek, hiding her discomfiture at the way he leans into the perfunctory caress and trying not to pull away too quickly. “I’ll be right back,” she repeats.  
  
As she heads out of the mansion and back to her car, she knows she should be pondering all the larger questions, but all she can think about is how to get to Willy’s and the proper way to ask someone to sell you blood.  
  
She really is her daughter’s mother.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	3. Chapter 3

Answering Prayers (Chapter Three)  
  
  
  
Joyce finds Willy’s more easily than she found the mansion. It’s a rundown, dirty dive bar and she shudders as she approaches the door, but then she shakes her head, draws herself up, and gives herself a pep talk. “You can do this,” she says under her breath as she plasters on what she hopes is a stern and resolute expression before walking in.  
  
If possible, this place is even more disreputable-looking on the inside than it is outside – more than that, however, is the fact that she’s pretty sure she’s the only human being in the room… and it’s not empty. Don’t stare, Joyce. You’re the mother of the Slayer. Act like this is all in a day’s work. So she affects a casual stride and makes for the bar. Luckily, Willow got more than a bit verbose when it came to the subject of Willy and Joyce immediately knows he’s the sniveling fellow behind the counter. “You must be the proprietor.” She smiles automatically and wants to kick herself for it afterward. At least _try_ not to act like this is a PTA meeting, would you?  
  
Of all the times for this thought to come to her, but when did she become this? She owns her own business, for god’s sake. She’s even done some post-divorce dating (though that went badly). And yet… it’s as if mother is her go-to, the fulcrum of her _self_. Shouldn’t she be a woman first?  
  
Willy’s is not the place to get sidetracked by an existential feminist crisis so once again she schools her expression into something harder and more threatening and asks herself: What would Buffy do?  
  
She decides the best approach is to get right to the point. “I need some blood.” There’s a muffled chuckle from halfway down the bar and she feels the hairs go up on the back of her neck. Something sees her as prey.   
  
Joyce Summers has no intention of dying in some filthy hole in the wall. “Look,” she says in a louder and more commanding voice, one even she is shocked carries not a hint of ‘Mommy’ in its tone, “You can either give _me_ the blood or I can tell the Slayer she has to come and get it for herself. She won’t be pleased about that and if she’s not pleased, I’m pretty sure _you_ won’t be either.”  
  
“I… uh… I heard the Slayer was out of town.”  
  
Her whole life, Joyce has been a terrible liar.   
  
She turns a cool, unblinking stare on Willy. “You heard wrong.” Ice water voice and she can feel the tension in the whole room, knows without looking that creatures are making their way to the back door.   
  
What do you know? Joyce isn’t a bad liar at all anymore. “Now could I please have that blood?”  
  
Moments later she is carrying ‘a dozen bags, on the house, and tell your Slayer I said hi’ out of the bar and back to her car. She’s watched but no one follows.   
  
It’s a rush, and if the power she feels is borrowed power, it’s enough to show her that Buffy does get something out of all this. What must it be like? Being the Slayer… the one girl in all the world…? There’s a feeling… not jealousy, because she loves her daughter fiercely and with all her being, but she wishes she could be, just for one moment, as special as her child is.  
  
Never once in her whole life has Joyce been extraordinary and it doesn’t even seem logical that she could give birth to… but she did, didn’t she?   
  
Maybe that’s her own extraordinary.   
  
So it all comes full circle and she’s back to being Mother because it’s the one and only thing she's done that seems to mean anything.  
  
Again, she shakes off the existential angst and gets back to the business at hand – going back to the mansion, feeding Angel, and seeing if he has any idea where Buffy is.  
  
The drive feels so much shorter now that she knows where she’s going and it’s the blink of an eye opening in front of the place she’s also calling The Mansion because it’s just easier to go along with the name the kids call it. Getting out of the car, she hurries to Angel with her bag of take-out in hand. “I’m back,” she calls out as she reenters the forbidding room where he’s lying right where she left him, wrapped in the throw and shivering. That makes sense since it’s cold in here. Should she light a fire? Because she’s pretty sure this place doesn’t have central heat.  
  
Something tells her not to and so she goes to a chest she sees by the hearth and, as she thought, it really is a blanket chest and the contents are woolen and warm. She takes two of them out and carries them to Angel along with a bag of the blood.   
  
Scarcely has she drawn near when he snatches the bag from her hand… growling. She drops the blankets. His face is now a frightening mask of ridges and fangs and golden eyes and those same fangs tear through plastic, gulping the blood greedily and downing it in seconds. He needs more. She can see the ravening hunger in the inhuman gaze now turned on her, runs back to the sack Willie gave her and fetches two more bags, wonders if this dozen with which she started will be enough after all. “Here,” and she hands him one more, which he drinks, a shade less greedily than before, and then the next, after which his face becomes soft and human and handsome again. Perhaps he’s satisfied for now.  
  
He is, because, to her surprise, he takes her hand and looks at her gratefully… before lying down and falling asleep. At least she finally concludes that he’s asleep. It takes her a moment of panic before she realizes his chest isn’t moving because he doesn’t breathe. He’s a vampire and even though he eats and sleeps and… oh god, had sex with her daughter… he’s…  
  
Dead.  
  
His chest never moves and his heart isn’t beating because he’s dead.   
  
Buffy had sex with a corpse.  
  
Her baby’s first lover wasn’t even alive.  
  
Nothing in Joyce’s life has prepared her for the reality in which she now finds herself.  
  
She stares at the sleeping cadaver on the ground before her and there are a million questions in her head, questions she can never ask Buffy.  
  
Picking up the blankets, she tucks them around Angel.  
  
You know, he still hasn’t spoken a word.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	4. Chapter 4

Answering Prayers (Chapter Four)  
  
  
  
Joyce should go home; she knows that. She should leave the sack of blood bags next to Angel, maybe write a note or something, and go back to her house – her normal, ordinary, middle class house.  
  
How did she end up in that house?  
  
She can still – sometimes, not often, but sometimes – see the girl she used to be in the mirror. The girl with ambition to be an artist, to change the way people saw the world around them, to run off with some wild boy and live by their wits and their art. She even has the occasional dream of Fook Island and what it would be like to live there. So how in the hell did she end up in mom jeans and a frumpy hair cut with a house full of Ethan Allen furniture?  
  
How did she wind up as the kind of woman who would put her daughter in a mental hospital for being different?  
  
If she were Buffy, she’d never come home.  
  
Tears start sliding down her cheeks. As much as she likes to cast blame on Mr. Giles and whoever the shadowy people Willow calls ‘The Council’ are for everything that’s gone wrong between her and her daughter, she knows it’s projection at best and outright hypocrisy at worst.   
  
That realization only makes the silent tears flow freer and faster.  
  
Of course, self-pity only lasts so long. The one good thing about having shed so much of her girlish identity is that she’s taken on pragmatism instead and it helps her to shake off the tears and ask the big question: What is she going to do now?  
  
She sits, silent as ever, staring at the sleeping figure on the ground. He looks so fragile and human, doesn’t he? But from everything she’s learned… How many people has he killed? How many innocent lives have flowed through those veins? Is he sorry? What difference does his soul make?  
  
Then other thoughts come. What would it be like to live for centuries? What has he seen? My god, he was probably in Europe when Impressionism was brand new and avant garde. And Dada. Did he experience any of that?   
  
Is it strange that she’s almost envious of him?  
  
It’s silly to be, though, and she gets that. Suppose it helps that one thing she has never found romantic is the idea of vampires, not even when that hot Michael Nouri played Dracula on TV. She liked him much better in Flashdance. Please don’t ever let Buffy remember that her mother once owned two of those torn sweatshirts, or go through the photo albums and find…  
  
Buffy can see all the embarrassing pictures of Joyce ever taken if only she’ll come home.  
  
Speaking of embarrassing, Angel has moved and the blankets have shifted and… oh god. There it is again. She feels almost dirty for this, but the first thing she thinks is that she didn’t know there were ones that big outside of the guys in porn.  
  
That’s a humiliating memory – oh, not the part about watching porn, but the part where Hank scoffed at her and told her to turn it off, that they weren’t “those kind of people”. He didn’t touch her for weeks after that, though he hadn’t really touched her for a long time before that either. At the time she’d thought they needed to spice things up – hence the trip to the video store – and then she’d thought he was just aging and slowing down. Of course, as it turned out, he just couldn’t keep up with two women at once, and he chose to give it all to his secretary.  
  
His _secretary_. God what a cliché. Couldn’t he at least have left her for another man or something?  
  
No time to cry over a tale so ancient that it comes packed in mothballs, because Angel is moving restlessly and crying out, clearly in the throes of a nightmare. Getting over her delicacy, she goes to him, wondering what to do. Should she wake him? What if that startles him and he attacks her? Taking a deep breath she decides to trust her instincts and kneels down beside him, close, but not touching. “Angel?” she says in the soothing, motherly voice she used to use on Buffy. “It’s all right. You’re safe. Nothing can hurt you.”  
  
How bizarre is it that what worked on a six year old girl worked nearly as well on a centuries old vampire? But what matters is that it did; she exhales in relief at that. No telling what she’d have done if it _hadn’t_ worked. She stares as his features relax and he seems once more so young and so innocent.  
  
Suddenly and with no warning, his eyes pop open and she almost starts. There’s no gold in those eyes, though, none of the ridges that betray what he really is, so she takes a calming breath and smiles at him. “Did you sleep well?” she asks, feeling like an idiot for asking that after having just soothed him through a nightmare.  
  
He just stares. No, he hasn’t said a single word since his return.  
  
Maybe… Is he so silent because he doesn’t remember her? “Do you know who I am?”  
  
A tilt of the head and he’s looking at her quizzically. It reminds her of a puppy, like a cocker spaniel she had when she was a girl. Why doesn’t she have a dog now?  
  
Oh, that’s right – Hank hates dogs.   
  
He’s out of her bed, out of her life, but somehow he’s still calling the shots. Damn him.   
  
You know, Willow’s become what seems like a pretty skilled witch. Do you think she’d know any spells that could shrink…?   
  
Don’t go there, Joyce. He’s the father of your child.  
  
Besides, Hank’s is small enough already.  
  
She fights back a giggle at her own impudence and wonders when she started thinking like… god, she needs to get laid, doesn’t she?  
  
And isn’t _that_ an appropriate subject for reflection in the presence of your teenage daughter’s boyfriend.  
  
He’s still staring at her.  
  
“I’m Buffy’s mom,” she finally adds, hoping it will help… and it does, just not in the way she expected.   
  
The look on his face is sheer terror and he shrinks back. Dammit! She forgot – Willow told her about the fight. Guess he’s still pretty shaken up. It’s totally inappropriate, but she’s more impressed with her daughter than ever. That tiny girl is strong enough to scare a vampire so completely. Wow.  
  
But then she looks into his eyes and she feels just awful and she wonders if all that fear can just be from a fight because she’s never seen such terror, not ever, not even in the eyes of six year old Buffy. “It’s okay,” she says, voice soft and soothing, “I won’t hurt you. I promise.” She reaches out her hand and he takes it, gazing at it as if he can somehow read it. Can he?   
  
Minutes pass and the silence is almost deafening in the absence of her voice. What is wrong with him? What’s happened to reduce him to this? She squeezes his hand and he looks up and into her eyes. “Where were you?” she asks, wondering if he’ll ever speak.  
  
He stares into her eyes as if he’s searching for something and this time he’s the one who squeezes _her_ hand, too tightly as if he’s struggling somehow. His mouth opens and closes once or twice with no sound and she asks again, “Where were you, Angel?”   
  
It’s no use. He just keeps staring and struggling and she’s about to give up when there’s a soft, croaking sound.  
  
“H-hell.”  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	5. Chapter 5

Answering Prayers (Chapter Five)  
  
  
  
Did he just say… “Hell?” Taking in his wide eyes and the tremors that now seem to have seized him, Joyce is sure she heard Angel correctly. “Oh my god.”  
  
The first thing she thinks: There’s a Hell?   
  
She has to admit to finding that unsettling and unnerving. After all, until a few hours ago, it had been years since she’d even done anything like praying. Oh, she sort of vaguely believes in God, but church? She barely remembers the last time she attended.   
  
Of course, now that she thinks about it, how much harder is it to believe in Hell once you’ve accepted the existence of slayers and demons… and vampires?  
  
You know, her college Theology course never prepared her for this. Come to think of it, college didn’t prepare her for much of anything. Time to wonder if maybe her parents should have saved their money.   
  
Stay present, Joyce. There might be a test on this later.   
  
“Okay,” she says, as much to herself as to the disconcertingly fragile and frightened vampire before her, “so you were in… Hell. How did you…?” She doesn’t finish the question because she knows the answer. Somehow, though for reasons Joyce knows must have been good and right because she knows her daughter at least that well, Buffy did this.  
  
Buffy sent the boy – scratch that, vampire – she loved to Hell.  
  
Whoa. This changes everything, doesn’t it? Now she thinks that maybe her own failure as a mother isn’t the only reason her daughter took off for parts unknown.  
  
“C-close your eyes,” Angel croaks, each word effortful still. Joyce looks at him quizzically, but she soon sees that he’s not making a request; this is a memory. She can tell by the way he’s staring past her into nothing. Oh god. Were these the last words her daughter spoke before she did what… what she had to do?  
  
“You’re home now,” Joyce says, trying to be comforting and tucking the blankets around him again. “You’re home and you’re safe and you won’t be going back to… well, you won’t be going anywhere.” As she finishes her business with the blankets, her hand almost brushes against… that was close, and closer to being _way_ too close to her daughter’s first lover than she’d prefer.   
  
Oh no. Is she blushing? She feels like she’s blushing.   
  
“Would you like some more blood?” she asks, just a shade too cheerily. Now _he’s_ the one with the quizzical look. “I just thought you might be hungry.” He seems to think about it for a moment before shaking his head. The silence has returned. Is there something she should say? Something else she should offer to do besides… “I brought you some pants,” she suddenly blurts out, “in case you’d like to…you know… get dressed.” Stammering like a silly schoolgirl there, aren’t you, Joyce? But she leaps to her feet and retrieves the pajama bottoms…  
  
…only to turn back around and see that Angel is standing…  
  
…without a blanket wrapped around him.  
  
Oh my. There it is again. Big as life.  
  
Yes, Joyce, you definitely need to get laid.   
  
She resists the urge to look away, instead plastering her ‘Mom’ smile on her face and keeping her eyes above Angel’s waist. “Here you go.” He reaches out and takes them from her, his eyes locked on hers now in a way she finds disconcerting. That’s just because she’s uncomfortable already, though, she’s sure, so she shakes off the feeling and turns away, hoping that signals him to put the clothes on.  
  
It does, because after a moment, she turns around and he’s indeed wearing those silk pajama bottoms. He’s still imposingly masculine and she’s not any less uncomfortable. Probably the vampire thing, though it’s not as though this is the first vampire she’s ever spent time with. She thinks of Spike with a pang. Does he have a soul, too? Because he seemed so nice.   
  
That’s possibly not the safest way to think. Her mind goes back to Willy’s and to that feeling of being considered prey. She needs to remember that, she decides, because – like it or not – she’s now officially part of the world her daughter lives in.  
  
What on Earth is she going to do? Angel is standing there as if waiting for instructions and her own stomach is letting her know that vampires aren’t the only ones who get hungry.   
  
She needs to go home, that’s what she needs to do. Eat something, maybe take a short nap, and then… then she’ll come back here.   
  
No, she’s not going to tell anyone that Angel’s returned.   
  
“I need to go back to my house,” she says, just as her stomach growls, “but I’ll be back, okay?” He looks worried so she hastens to reassure him. “There’s more blood in the bag over there. So you can eat or rest or…” She shrugs, not really knowing what else vampires do. “I’ll be back soon,” she repeats. He doesn’t move – or speak – so she smiles again, and then she leaves.   
  
Back in her car, she breathes. It feels new and strange, but then doesn’t everything today. She’s the Slayer’s Mom and if that title doesn’t come with a set of super powers like the ones her daughter has, it comes with a whole bag of surprises. Breathing again, she tries to come to grips with them.  
  
Yeah. That will not be happening soon.  
  
Maybe instead you should just think about some of the more mundane questions you have, Joyce. Like: Do vampires use the bathroom? What? It’s a perfectly legitimate question. After all, their equipment apparently works for _some_ activities… activities she does _not_ want to think about, thank you. Think about something else.  
  
Is Angel an artist? She wondered about that before and she’s still curious. Maybe she’ll go up to Buffy’s room, see if she saved the drawing Joyce thought she saw once. At least it might give her something to talk to him about or… does art therapy work on vampires? After all, Angel must be traumatized by being in Hell.  
  
She can’t begin to imagine what that must have been like. All right, it was only for a month and Angel’s a demon so maybe it was easier for him but… no, somehow she doesn’t think so. He seems very damaged by what he endured.   
  
You know, while she’s on the subject of Hell and damnation, the whole matter of his soul is bothering her. Willow told her about vampires being soulless and that what made Angel turn evil was losing the soul he’d been cursed with, but Joyce is sort of confused by all of that. Plenty of human beings are evil, or at least heedlessly cruel, and they have souls… don’t they?  
  
Maybe she should have taken a better Theology course.   
  
No time for any further reflection, though, because there’s a car in her driveway. It’s a Citroen, so she immediately knows that Mr. Giles is here. She parks her car in front of her house and as she gets out, the man himself all but runs to meet her. “Mrs. Summers… Joyce... I… Is Buffy with you?”  
  
What? Buffy? Joyce is stunned. But before she can ask any questions, he continues. “I heard… that is, there are rumours… The word is that the Slayer is back in Sunnydale. Have you seen her? Has Buffy come home?”  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	6. Chapter 6

Answering Prayers (Chapter Six)  
  
  
  
“I heard… that is, there are rumours… The word is that the Slayer is back in Sunnydale. Have you seen her? Has Buffy come home?”  
  
It takes a moment for all of Mr. Giles’s words to register, but when they do, Joyce’s briefly soaring hopes come crashing back down to Earth. Boy, word sure travels fast in Sunnydale, doesn’t it? Because it’s clear that the rumours he’s talking about resulted from her recent visit to Willy’s. Proof that her daughter has quite the reputation, but proof also that there’s no cause for celebration today.   
  
Before this afternoon, Joyce would have had no confidence at all in her acting ability, but now… now that it seems she’s got all the demons in Sunnydale running for cover with one sentence spoken in a dimly-lit bar? Yes, she thinks she’s up to the task of fooling a man who lied to _her_ for a year. “No.” Then she pretends to be frazzled. “I was out this afternoon talking to an artist about a showing at the gallery. Oh god. What if Buffy came home and I wasn’t here?” To her shock, there are even tears in her eyes. One day… one day with a demon and she’s so changed she can scarcely believe it.  
  
Mr. Giles is completely taken in. The tears probably did it. “There, there,” he says in a patronizing tone she hates so much. He sounds just like Hank. “You could hardly have known. And if she has indeed returned to Sunnydale, she’ll certainly come back here. I should telephone Willow and Xander…”  
  
“Do you want to come in? Use my phone?”  
  
He considers it, but then says, “No, no. I don’t want the line to be busy in case she calls you. I shall return home, call from there. In the meantime, you wait here, in case she returns or calls.”  
  
“Okay,” she replies, eyes wide and manner eager. “I’ll call you if I hear anything.” She reaches out and grasps his hand. “Thank you,” she says with ersatz earnestness thick enough to choke the air from her lungs.   
  
Of course he’s uncomfortable with the gesture; he’s such a stereotypically British type. But right now she’s glad of it because his discomfort hastens his departure and after a few more ‘yes, right, well’s’ he’s gone, his Citroen puttering back from whence it came.   
  
Joyce pulls her own car into her driveway and then goes inside the house, heading straight to the refrigerator. She’s not just hungry; she’s ravenous. Luckily, there’s leftover Chinese takeout and, without even bothering to heat it up, she dispenses with a fork and just eats some sweet and sour pork right out of the container.   
  
Mmmm. So good. She almost moans as she feels the food head down her throat. There’s something about that first bite when you’re practically starving…  
  
You know, she hasn’t eaten food straight from the carton like this since college. Back then, she hadn't worried about napkins or keeping her elbows off the table, or about how impolite it is to eat with your fingers or... about any of those rules she's drilled into Buffy as if she herself had never broken any of them.   
  
If she closes her eyes, she can still remember wiping greasy hands on faded jeans before kissing... Cory. Was it Cory? Yeah, he was the one with the long, blond hair... almost as long as hers. In seconds she’s awash in memories…  
  
Catching a glimpse of herself in the reflection of the microwave door brings her right back to the present. Not for the first time today she wonders: How did I become… this?  
  
Was it sudden, all at once, the day she married Hank? Or was it a gradual chipping away until all that was left was this suburban housewife-turned-divorcee pretending she’s still a creator by selling the works of people braver and bolder than she ever was?  
  
God. This is such a depressing train of thought. Can she please, _please_ get off at the next stop?  
  
She takes the container of Chinese into the living room and plops down onto the couch, scarfing down the contents after grabbing the remote and turning on the TV. The local news is on. There’s not a single mention of vampires or demons.   
  
When the food is done, she covers herself with a throw and cuddles against the well-worn and anything but decorative pillows, letting the talking heads discussing the mundane world she used to believe in lull her to sleep.  
  
It’s anything but restful, the hour or so of sleep she manages to get, and she wakes up suddenly from a dream whose details immediately evaporate but which leaves her shuddering and she’s certain that the fabric of it was woven of the things she’s learned and seen. Was it like this for Buffy when she learned that monster movies were a better source of information on current events than CNN?   
  
Oh how she wishes Buffy really were back in Sunnydale. There’s so much she wants to talk about with her daughter.   
  
She can’t, though, because Buffy’s not here.   
  
But Angel is and she needs to get back to him.  
  
Things are more complicated now, however, because of Mr. Giles, so she takes a moment to think about how best to cover her absence should anyone come back here to see if Buffy has returned after all. She knows they’ll see that her car is gone  
  
One thing Joyce has noticed is the tendency of Buffy’s friends to just come barging in without knocking, so, chancing that now that night is falling she’ll probably be in less danger from burglars rather than more like in normal cities, she decides she’ll leave the door unlocked… and write a note for Buffy which she’ll place in plain view on the table in the entry.  
  
So she gets pen and paper and, struggling to keep the tears at bay, she writes: “Buffy. If you read this, please stay here. I’ll be right back. There’s so much I want to tell you, sweetheart, but first and foremost, I need you to know that I love you and I’m sorry and I want to do everything I can to make up for what happened. Wait here for me. Love, Mom.”  
  
Is it silly that a small part of her thinks that maybe, just maybe, Buffy might actually come home and see it and she should have been leaving that note every day anyway? But she feels that very hope and she knows that, in spite of missing all the pieces of herself that got lost along the way, one thing she can never regret, despite all the pain she’s in now, is that she’s a mother – a mother who loves her baby and wants so much for her to come home.  
  
Then pragmatism reasserts itself and she realizes she should have a cover story ready in case Mr. Giles or one of the kids wonders why she left instead of waiting… a moment ago she’d been thinking… Burglars! That’s it! She’ll tell them she got a call that the alarm system at the gallery had gone off and she went to check, thinking it might even be Buffy. That’s the ticket!  
  
Taking a deep breath and deciding to save the ruminations about how maybe her daughter didn’t pluck her powers of dissimulation out of thin air, or Hank’s DNA, after all for another day, she grabs her coat, her purse, and her car keys and heads out the door.  
  
It seems like the drive to Angel’s takes mere seconds this time and she’s almost shaking as she walks back down the crumbling steps that lead to the entrance. She’s only been gone for about two hours, but that doesn’t mean nothing happened while she was gone. Is he okay? Has he eaten?  
  
Did Mr. Giles or one of the others come here and find him?  
  
“Angel?” she calls out tentatively as she makes her way back into the cold and unfriendly mansion.   
  
He’s on the couch, wrapped in blankets but shivering all the same and she goes to him. “I’m back,” she says brightly. “Just like I promised.”  
  
Had she promised? She doesn’t remember for sure. But as she sits beside him, she’s completely unprepared for the fear and desperation in his eyes or for the way he grabs her hand, his voice still a pained rasp as he begs, “Don’t leave.”  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	7. Chapter 7

Answering Prayers (Chapter Seven)  
  
  
  
Angel’s grip is tight, tighter than normal, though come to think of it, it’s not like Joyce knows what’s normal for a vampire. Well, except for one thing: She’s sure that being helpless and afraid is anything _but_ normal for Angel and his kind. “I’m here,” she says, placing her hand over his. “I’m right here.”  
  
Obviously that was the right thing to say because his grip loosens. Good thing, because she can feel her hand tingle from the loss of circulation. “I should probably get you something more to wear,” and she’s about to get up when his grip tightens again. She hastens to explain. “I’m not leaving the house. I’m just going upstairs to get you some more clothes.” Her voice is the soothing, motherly tone she’d used on Buffy back when her daughter had been a toddler peculiarly prone to nightmares. Funny how not until now does it click… that must have been when something in her little-girl brain had seen… had known… had feared…  
  
Her daughter has been this thing called a Slayer for longer than Joyce ever knew, hasn’t she?  
  
Now isn’t the time. When that time will be, Joyce doesn’t know, but it’s definitely not now. So she hurries upstairs, back to Angel’s bedroom. She takes it in more now than she did before. It’s an imposing room, lots of thick, carved wood, and the sheets are silk. Angel was surely not celibate when he was without his soul. This is the bedroom of a man who has lots and lots of sex. Who was she? Was it that girl – vampire – Spike spoke of, the one that Willow mentioned too? Drusilla… that was her name, right? The one who was crazy, the one who killed the other Slayer - the one named Kendra.  
  
The Slayer who’d been called because… oh god, Buffy died. She had died, not forever, but for a moment, and the fact that it could happen and Joyce didn’t know, wasn’t told… damn Mr. Rupert Giles and everyone else who put her little girl in danger every day! Because for all the super powers they gave her, Buffy still died… and Kendra, who had those same powers, is dead and has stayed that way.  
  
Oh gosh. What about Kendra’s parents? Do they know? Did anyone call them? Was her body sent home? Should Joyce… ?   
  
A wail comes from downstairs and Joyce curses herself for all this dawdling she’s done. Rushing to the closet, she finds a heavy satin robe and grabs it before racing downstairs to her fragile charge.   
  
He’s in front of the fireplace again, on the ground, right where he was when he returned; she goes to him, kneels down, and puts her hand on his arm. “It’s all right. I’m here.”   
  
Well he must be getting better, because he grows calm more quickly than he has yet, but he’s staring at her fingers so she looks too. They seem so dark against his unnatural pallor. It’s disconcerting. “I brought you a robe.” Now his eyes move to her face and she can almost see something behind his eyes – like the turning of gears… like the shifting into place of puzzle pieces scattered. Good god. What must have happened to him in Hell to leave him so broken. She lifts the robe so he can get a good look at it, maybe recognize it, and it’s now that she notices… is that fur trim? Guess there aren’t any vampires in PETA, huh.   
  
He gets up before she can and, to her shock, he extends a hand to help her to her feet. One of the things he seems to have regained: manners. “Thank you.” His only reply is a nod as he puts on the robe. Is it strange that the more clothing he puts on, the more imposing he becomes? She almost thinks he was easier to deal with naked… well, almost, anyway, at least if he hadn’t been so… big.  
  
Please tell her she’s not blushing again.  
  
It’s odd, but she thinks the robe is… changing him? No, not that, but his eyes are closed and his expression pensive. More of those puzzle pieces coming together, picture forming.   
  
Should she be frightened? Oddly enough, she isn’t, even when he opens his eyes and something in there is sharper. It’s sad, too, and maybe that’s why she’s not afraid. Of course, she might also be pathetically naïve, not a possibility to be discounted given how long her daughter managed to keep a secret like being the Slayer from her.  
  
Giving credence to that possibility is her next move: asking Angel a question. “Do you remember what happened?”  
  
He stares at her with those eyes as old as time. “Buffy.” His voice is still a rasp, thick-tongued and uncomfortable, but he’s less uncertain now, she can see it.   
  
Joyce nods, but is sharp enough to see that now might be a time for damage control. “She didn’t have a choice.” Then, without thinking, she blurts out a truth she isn’t sure she wanted to tell him. “She’s gone. She left the night she… the night it happened.”  
  
His expression confounds her. She doesn’t know what she expected, but this befuddlement isn’t it, that’s for sure. He’s suddenly looking at her as if she doesn’t belong here or something. What confuses her most? He doesn’t ask her any questions.  
  
A moment later, he’s back at the couch, seated, and for some reason – possibly that naiveté of hers, she follows and sits beside him. “You seem better,” she says brightly, her ‘Mom’ voice causing her to fight back the urge to wince.  
  
Or maybe she shouldn’t feel that way at all, because… did he just smile? It was a soft flicker of an expression that vanished almost before she saw it, but she’d swear it was a smile.   
  
Then the shadows return. He’s staring into nothingness and she thinks he’s remembering a world that isn’t the one they’re in right now. “You’re not going back there. I promise,” though why she says that when she knows damn well she can’t promise any such thing is beyond her.  
  
He closes his eyes, brow furrowing, some sort of deep thought going on, before he turns and looks her straight in the eye. “How… how long?”  
  
What? How long… Oh! But that doesn’t make much sense. He should know how long he was in Hell, shouldn’t he? “About a month,” she answers.  
  
His eyes are wide and he’s staring at her as if he didn’t hear her correctly and a chill she’s now experienced more than once goes up her spine as she asks him almost the same question. “How long… how long were you in Hell?”  
  
As stunning as it was to learn where he’d been, it’s nowhere near as shocking as what she’s about to learn.   
  
“A…” He struggles, but this time his tongue fails him. Frustrated, he grabs her hand and using his finger, he traces numbers in her palm: One. Zero. Zero.  
  
Oh god. Oh god.   
  
“You were… One hundred years?” His slight nod is confirmation.  
  
Forgetting everything he ever did, everything he is, all she can think of is the horror of one hundred years of torture. She wraps her arms tightly around him and holds him close. “I didn’t know... I’m so sorry.” She says it over and over as his head rests on her shoulder.  
  
It takes a few minutes for her to notice the dampness seeping through the fabric of her shirt.   
  
Angel is crying.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	8. Chapter 8

Answering Prayers (Chapter Eight)  
  
  
  
Joyce holds Angel close as his tears keep falling. She can’t imagine – knows she can’t even begin to conceive – what he went through in that place called Hell, and knowing that he was there for a hundred years… The month she’d _thought_ represented his term was bad enough. “I’ll keep you safe,” she says, and she means it, even if she has no idea how she’ll keep that promise if something comes to try to reclaim Angel.   
  
She’s almost glad Buffy isn’t here to see the pain Angel is in or to know just how much longer every second that passed was in that horrible place she had to send him.   
  
What will happen when (when, not if, please God, not if) Buffy comes home? How will Angel react to her?  
  
Cross that bridge when you come to it, Joyce. For now you need to worry about helping him become whole again. Guess being a mother is a skill set that has more uses than she ever thought, because through all her thoughts, she hasn’t missed a beat – soothing him through the tears and out the other side. He’s not crying anymore and he’s sitting up, looking at her with something she thinks is gratitude shining in those brown eyes. “Thank you,” he says and that clinches it.   
  
“You’re welcome.” Why he smiles when she says that, Joyce has no idea, but she’s glad to see his mood lighten. She can only imagine how long it’s been since the corners of that mouth last turned up and she’s almost surprised he hasn’t forgotten the mechanics.  
  
Their eyes meet and she sees shadows, shadows she imagines for the briefest moment are shaped like flames. The curiosity she feels about what Hell was like is almost unbearable, but she’s no sadist; she has no intention of asking Angel anything about that place. “Are you hungry?” Oh dear. She asked that before checking to see if there’s actually any blood left from the supply she’d laid in. Then her eyes fall on the bag and she can tell by the shape that there are bags still contained in it and she can’t help breathing a sigh of relief.  
  
Which he hears. “I won’t hurt you.”  
  
He thought she meant…? That’s not… or maybe it is. She’s not sure. She hopes not, but the truth is that he _is_ a vampire and for all the sympathy she feels for his ordeal in Hell, she can’t forget that he’s not unlike the creature at Willy’s whose eyes never left her for a moment until she drove away.  
  
She’s not the top of the food chain and now that she knows it… No, it will never not be there in the corner of her thoughts, informing every move she makes, every conversation she has. She’ll never not look at a stranger and wonder… “I know,” she says, a fraction too late for it to ring the slightest bit true.  
  
His eyes are searching and she feels almost naked. “You’re right,” he says, and she knows he’s agreeing with what she _didn’t_ say. It’s almost terrifying, the way the vagueness is gone as if it was never there. It reminds her again that he’s not human and she wonders if her daughter realizes this as much as she should or if soft brown eyes and a handsome face turned a Slayer into a lovelorn teenage girl too besotted to see the truth, or all of it anyway.  
  
Buffy’s absence is her answer, isn’t it?  
  
More than ever, she feels the need to hold her little girl close and brush her fingers through her hair and tell her everything will be all right, because there are three pints of Ben & Jerry’s in the fridge and a copy of Thelma and Louise in the VCR and… She can’t do any of it. She can’t tell her daughter that now, at last, Mommy gets it and there’s nothing they can’t talk about. She can’t be wise and worldly or sweet and sympathetic or any combination thereof.   
  
What if her worst fear comes true? What if Buffy never comes home?  
  
“She’s gone.” It’s Angel’s voice and it startles her, though it shouldn’t.  
  
“Yes, she’s gone,” and she tries not to say it as if that’s the way it will always be.   
  
“I remember you,” he says and his voice is sad, as if what he’s remembering is that conversation in the driveway, when he wouldn’t have had a soul at all.  
  
She nods. “You were Angelus then.”  
  
Now he’s the one who nods. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Maybe it’s the fact that Buffy is so present in her thoughts, but it’s the mother who replies. “You should be. That’s not how a mother should find out… But then again, you were probably trying to hurt me.” She laughs. It’s a short, harsh sound and she doesn’t recognize it as herself, but she knows it’s her. “I guess the good part is that I didn’t know you were a vampire. That might have made it worse.”  
  
He’s staring at her again and it’s disconcerting, enough so that she asks rather curtly, “Is there something you want to say?”  
  
His head cocks to the side and he says – thick-tongued and with the vagueness of dredging up a memory, “You dated a robot.” He sort of half chuckles as he says it but it doesn’t seem funny to Joyce at all. What a terrible thing to say to someone! Does he really have his soul after all? Because Joyce has never…! How ridiculous! The only man she’s dated since Hank was…  
  
Oh god! Suddenly a whole lot of things she’d put to the side and never let herself think about too sharply or keenly make horrifying sense and… “Bathroom,” she stammers, getting up and racing away before Angel can tell her where there’s one on this floor. She does remember where the kitchen is, so she finds her way there…   
  
Just in time to lose every bite of this afternoon’s meal of Chinese food in Angel’s sink.  
  
Buffy is not the only one in the family who’s had sex with something inhuman, something not even alive, and somehow a robot seems even more perverse than a vampire because it was never human in the first place and… Oh god. Is this genetic? Is this why Hank ended up finding her repulsive?   
  
She can feel Angel’s presence, so she grabs a dishtowel and wipes her face before turning around. “I’m so sorry,” she says, face turning scarlet with humiliation. “I’ll clean this up as good as new. You’ll never know that… Well, you’ll never know.”  
  
“Buffy never told you,” he says and though he says it like a statement, it’s really a question.  
  
So that’s how she treats it. “No. No, she didn’t.” This time her rueful chuckle is familiar. “I can’t really blame her, though. Not sure how that conversation would have gone.”  
  
“You were… with him.”  
  
Okay, that’s taking things a bit too far. She stiffens, back straight, haughty froideur even she can feel, so surely he must. “That’s none of your business, Angel.”  
  
He looks extremely chastened and she feels like, well, a bitch. It occurs to her that vampires probably have different boundaries and anyway, he was in Hell. His manners and sense of propriety could legitimately be claimed to have been affected severely by the trauma.  
  
“No. You’re right. It’s not…” He’s struggling again and the part of her that took an Anthropology of Language course before dropping it to take Accounting at Hank's urging is fascinated that certain random words seem to be giving him trouble. “I’m sorry,” he finally finishes.   
  
She’s going to argue the point but what comes out of her mouth is, “Apology accepted,” and somehow that seems to be the best thing she could have said because he smiles again. It’s a hopeful thing and she has the weirdest feeling that she helped him in some intangible but meaningful way.  
  
Returning his smile, she takes his hand briefly. “I better clean up the mess I made.” To her surprise, and without a word, he gets out cleanser and two rags. They clean the sink in silence, but it’s comfortable silence, and that’s… new.   
  
Soon, though, they’re done and she glances at her watch. “Shit,” she curses, shocking herself – and Angel. “I’m sorry! It’s just… that Mr.Giles will probably be at my house soon, checking to see if Buffy’s come back.” Before Angel can even ask, she explains, “There’s a rumour that she’s back… and he doesn’t know that I started it. When I went to get blood for you. I told them it was for her and... well, they thought she was out of town and I had to say she wasn’t and… Oh god. This is really a mess, isn’t it?”  
  
He’s staring again, only this time his eyes are full of wonder… and gratitude. “You didn’t tell...? About me?”  
  
“No.”  
  
The faint glint of tears is back. “Thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome.” She follows him back to the… living room? Parlour? Then she gathers her things and with a firm and sincere, “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she’s out the door and then in her car, heading home.  
  
A whole lot has happened since this morning, but Joyce is living completely in the moment. What in the heck is she going to do about Rupert Giles?  
  
  
To be continued…


	9. Chapter 9

Answering Prayers (Chapter Nine)  
  
  
  
Joyce wonders if she’s maybe just a little psychic, because sure enough, Mr. Giles is standing by his silly Citroen, which is parked in her driveway – again – when she arrives home. All right, the first time she gave him a pass, but twice?   
  
Focus, Joyce, now is not the time. No it’s the time to put her clueless and gullible face back on, so she manages that along with a credible impression of frantic as she parks her car at the curb – unable to completely cease grumbling inwardly at the rudeness and presumptuousness of people who park in other people’s driveways – and hurries to get out. “Is Buffy here?”  
  
Oh dear. What if she _is_?  
  
But she isn’t. Somehow, after today, Joyce is sure she’ll know when her baby is near.   
  
She keeps an expression of feverish hope on her face even though what she really wants to do is tell Mr. Giles to get his damn car out of her driveway. But just then she remembers that he really _does_ feel that hope… and it’s all her fault. That certainly takes at least the high out of her dudgeon and even though she’s still not at all sure she’ll ever like him, she at least feels some sympathy, even as he replies with an accusatory and pompous-sounding “No she isn’t. May I ask where you’ve been?” that carries the disturbing echo of Hank in its tone.  
  
She ignores the uncomfortable reminder of the bad old days, at least for now, and breathlessly blurts out the cover story she readied for this very moment. “I got a call that the burglar alarm went off at the gallery. I thought it might be Buffy, but she wasn’t…” She lets the sentence trail off and her visitor looks slightly abashed.  
  
“Of course.” His voice is still patronizing, but she keeps reminding herself of his ordeal today and it helps. “I apologize if I sounded put out. It’s just… I fear this has all been for nothing. Neither I nor Willow nor Xander have found a trace of her.” He suddenly reaches out and takes her hand. “I’m so sorry to have raised your hopes. It seems this was just some wild rumour.”  
  
It’s time to react and miraculously she does. Somehow the girl who failed miserably when she auditioned for a high school play has grown into a woman who can cry on cue. Maybe she can do this because she’s reenacting a moment that actually happened or maybe… Either way, she’s not looking a gift horse in the mouth. “I wanted… Why won’t she come home?”  
  
Will a florid display of emotion be enough to get him to leave? She has thinking to do and plans to make and… oh, it might be a good idea to try again to digest a meal. None of that can be accomplished with him here.  
  
Mission accomplished because now he’s uncomfortable, though he plays at being sympathetic. “There, there.” It sounds as if he’s about to pat her on the head, but he drops her hand, which is certainly contradictory but even more certainly welcome.   
  
“I better go inside, check the machine, maybe…”   
  
He says nothing, but the look on his face is full of pity and she wonders what would happen if he found out that _he’s_ the one who’s most deserving of that emotion. Does he even know what she knows? Has Willow told him…? You know, it doesn’t seem to her as if she did. She might have underestimated the girl’s capacity for discretion and she apologizes inwardly. Hopefully Willow retains that ability to keep her own counsel even in the face of giddy romantic longing. It will stand her in good stead down the road if her life goes at all the way it did for Joyce.  
  
Not for the first time today, she tamps down an uncomfortable, unhappy memory.  
  
“Yes, well, I should be on my way then.” That and the exchange of awkward farewells are all that remains and soon the Citroen is put-putting its way out of her driveway.  
  
It’s not quite ‘good riddance’ she’s thinking, but she’s glad he’s gone. He can tell the others the story for her and she… she can eat something and figure out what she should do about Angel.  
  
So she heads back into the house, bypassing the note for Buffy sitting on the table in the foyer, the note she’s going to leave there – just in case.   
  
Mr. Giles has no idea just how much less his hope was than hers, even if she was the clear-eyed realist holding the cards today, because he might be Buffy’s Watcher, but she’s Buffy’s _mother_ and she doesn’t think he begins to understand what that means.  
  
The funny thing is, until today, Joyce didn’t either. Only now is she starting to realize…  
  
The refrigerator yawns open before her, but nothing in it strikes her fancy. She ate – and lost – the last of the Chinese food and other than that, there’s nothing that doesn’t require more preparation than she’s interested in doing, so… Yes, Joyce, for all the lectures about healthy meals and proper nutrition to which she’s subjected Buffy over the years, is going to drive through a fast food joint on her way back to Angel’s tonight.   
  
Speaking of Angel, he probably needs some food too, so she resolves to stop at… oh shi… _shoot_! There is bound to be some fallout at Willy’s since she’s sure either Giles or the kids went there in search of Buffy and… She’s getting a headache from all the complications and secrets and subterfuge.  
  
Suck it up, Joyce. You can handle this.   
  
But how?  
  
Just then she catches sight of herself in the mirror and… you know, a wardrobe change wouldn’t hurt.   
  
As much as she has always mocked women who borrow their teenage daughters’ clothes, necessity is the mother of hypocrisy, so… yes, she’s rooting through Buffy’s closet in search of something that looks less ‘suburban housewife’ and more ‘badass demon hunter’.  
  
Oh dear Lord! When did Buffy buy this? Joyce has rules about skirt length and this is far too…  
  
Does it really matter now? And isn’t the truth that she would almost allow Buffy to embrace nudism if she’d come home right now?  
  
Well, well. Where did Buffy get…? Pfft! Who cares? Because it’s perfect. A black leather jacket just screams ‘don’t mess with me’ and that’s exactly what Joyce needs right now. So she digs it out from the back of the closet and pulls it out into the light.   
  
The first thing she notes is that it’s too big for Buffy, too big for Joyce either. In fact, it’s not a woman’s jacket at all, it’s…  
  
It must be Angel’s.  
  
All the better. A demon’s clothes will help her fit right in at a demon bar. So she grabs a black tank top out of Buffy’s dresser drawer then heads to her room where she digs out that torn pair of jeans she could never quite bring herself to throw away and…   
  
Two minutes later, she looks into the mirror and it’s like seeing an old friend.  
  
It’s her. It’s really her. The her she thought had withered away. Oh sure, there are lines in her face that are new and the hair is still awful, but… She’s Joyce again.  
  
Resisting the impulse to stand and stare any longer, she heads for the bathroom. If her daughter has taught her anything, it’s that the right hair is essential to pulling off a look, so with the aid of a rattail comb and some hairspray… well, her hair still isn’t great, but at least now it’s less ‘soccer Mom’ and more ‘rocker chick after a bender’ and that’s a distinct improvement.  
  
Time to go. Blood waits for no one. And if Willy gives her any trouble? Joyce is Joyce once more and she’s pretty sure she can handle anything.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	10. Chapter 10

Answering Prayers (Chapter Ten)  
  
  
  
Now that she knows the lay of the land, Joyce’s stride is much more confident as she enters Willy’s bar, which is good because she can almost feel the tension in the air the second she walks in. Damn. She was right, wasn’t she? Someone has been here.  
  
Trying to appear as if this is all in a night’s work, she doesn’t look in either direction as she makes her way to the bar. “Need some more blood, Willy.”   
  
“Had a visit from some of the Slayer’s friends,” he says, an edge to his whiny voice. He’s looking at her in a smarmy ‘I’ve got a secret’ way… and he’s not heading off to the back to fetch that blood.  
  
“And even though they tried to play it cool, it’s obvious they don’t know where she is?” Joyce lets her jacket fall open, tight black tank top doing some of the heavy lifting and her newly-confident voice doing the rest. “Well let me ask you this: If you were the Slayer, who would you trust to have your back? Some silly school kids…” She leans forward and Willy actually licks his lips. Score one for the girls. “… or me?”  
  
 _Now_ she lets her eyes scan the bar, even meeting the gaze of one almost human-looking creature… almost, except for the golden eyes. Vampire. It helps that she’s seen one in full game face before because she doesn’t flinch – neither does he, but he gives her a respectful nod and she feels safe in looking away.   
  
When she looks at the bar again, Willy is gone. Where did he…? Oh, he’s in the back, getting her blood. Good boy.   
  
Another thing she learned from her daughter? Attitude is everything. She’s standing, hipshot, jaw occluded, arms akimbo when he returns. She makes no move to pay and he doesn’t ask. She leans forward again. “What did you tell the wannabes?” Inwardly, she feels sorry for insulting Willow and Xander this way, but it has to be done.  
  
A voice comes from down the bar. The vampire. “He didn’t tell them anything.” For a second she’s about to ask Willy for confirmation, but she thinks better of it. This guy feels… old. Not Angel old, but old enough that seeming to question his word would be disrespectful – and dangerous. He approaches and she does her best to seem nonchalant. “You smell like Angelus.”  
  
She does? Okay, now she’s learned that vampires have some pretty amazing senses – note: don’t wear perfume when you visit Angel – and this confirms where Buffy got the jacket as well. She keeps her expression blank however and answers with a noncommittal “Do I?”  
  
The vampire laughs, exposing a row of gleaming white teeth. Don’t get nervous, Joyce. If he can smell another vampire on your jacket, he’ll smell your sweat for sure. His eyes rake her from head to toe; she makes no move to close her jacket. When he’s done taking in the sights, he cocks his head and offers, “You look better in that jacket than he did.”  
  
That was unexpected. Well, she has no cover story prepared for how she acquired Angel’s clothing and the last thing she wants to do is try winging it any more than she’s already had to, so instead of saying anything, she winks.  
  
Good call. The vampire grins, then nods, and she sees a few other nods in the dimly lit room as well; for a moment she’s almost arrogant, but then she catches herself. These are demons and she’s _not_ the Slayer. Another look at the vampire’s eyes and… he has an agenda. Sizing her up, preparing to use her – or kill her – at some point in the future… whatever it is, her generous display of still blessedly perky cleavage hasn’t turned him into a gibbering idiot like Willy, even if he did enjoy the view.   
  
“Any chance you’ll give me any blood?” he asks as she’s turning to leave and yes, she was right, he’s sizing her up.  
  
“Sorry,” she shoots back, cheeky but calm, “I have none to spare.”  
  
Another laugh, hearty this time, but she doesn’t even glance his way, heading for the door instead.   
  
Nothing follows her to the car. If this was a test, then she passed – at least this time.  
  
Three blocks away, she almost needs to stop and park for a moment as her hands begin to shake badly. Did Buffy ever feel like this? Probably not, seeing as how her daughter has a whole host of powers, the specifics of which she’s not entirely sure except for what little she’s learned from Willow, but pretty damn impressive ones all the same.  
  
Get it together, Joyce. Tonight won’t be the last time you need to do something like this.  
  
It’s late, isn’t it? There’d better be a fast food place open.   
  
Luckily for her, that new In ‘n Out is half an hour away from closing. Thank heavens, because she hates the Doublemeat Palace. There’s something wrong about the taste of their burgers. So she gets into the shockingly long line of cars and takes a deep breath.  
  
It’s then that all the thoughts she has kept at bay come crashing through her barriers.  
  
Oh god.   
  
Another deep breath and… well, it’s not really a superpower but she’s a mother and she runs a business so organization tends to come naturally and she’s soon partially wrangled the thoughts into some kind of coherent pattern, which makes them at least easier to deal with if not any less disconcerting.  
  
Joyce Summers, the mother of the – temporarily – absent Slayer, is now also the caretaker of a vampire recently returned from Hell – a vampire who was her daughter’s lover. She herself has… no, don’t think about that Joyce. You’re about to eat. Next topic? Rupert Giles and the kids. Who can’t know about Angel, because…  
  
How had she not once thought about this consciously before? It’s one of the things Willow told her, breaking into tears as she revealed… Angel – or Angelus, to be exact, she supposes – killed Jenny Calendar. Willow’s favorite teacher and, apparently, Rupert Giles’s girlfriend.  
  
She never met the woman, but somehow being able to put a name, the name of someone at least connected to her own life, on one of his victims makes Angel’s nature more concrete, more _real_.   
  
Vampires kill people. It’s how they stay alive, or undead, or whatever it is you call their existence. All right, apparently when Angel has his soul, he only drinks from bags like the ones she got for him from Willy’s, but that doesn’t change her point, does it?  
  
The vampire she talked to at the bar… he probably _doesn’t_ stick to bags. No, she doesn’t have that illusion. And right now he’s probably out there, draining the life from some poor, unsuspecting soul who’s guilty of nothing save naïveté and bad luck. Some poor soul who, a month or so ago, could just as easily have been Joyce.  
  
But it’s not, and it won’t be, and if her happiness about that seems cold, it’s a cold she needs to bear the chill of the world as it really is.  
  
There are more things in heaven and earth, Joyce, than are dreamt of in what used to pass for your philosophy.  
  
She pulls forward and at last she’s up at the menu and can place her order. “Double Double with cheese, fries, and a large Coke,” she says to the disembodied voice in the speaker.  
  
Her eyes close briefly, shoulders slump, and her limbs feel unaccountably heavy. Looks like the adrenaline she’s been coasting on is ebbing, and none too gradually at that. She probably has just enough juice left to grab the food and get back to the mansion. She wonders: Will she be safe if she spends the night at Angel’s?  
  
  
To be continued…


	11. Chapter 11

Answering Prayers (Chapter Eleven)  
  
  
  
Joyce is so drained that she’s pretty sure she looks like a zombie as she shuffles into Angel’s mansion, clutching the bag of blood along with the greasy sack of fast food she’s unsure she’ll even have the strength to eat. Never in her life has she suffered an adrenaline crash like this… though, to be fair to herself, she’s never had a day like this, either.   
  
Angel is on his feet and there to steady her before she’s even completely entered the great room. “I’m okay,” she says, but he guides her to the couch, anyway. She supposes it’s nice that he’s an old fashioned gentleman, but she feels vulnerable now that she’s so tired and somehow this is nothing like holding him while he cried. More than ever, she’s aware of what he is and she thinks maybe she should have driven home instead.   
  
It’s too late now.  
  
He’s sitting beside her and he strokes her arm. “Mine.”  
  
His eyes are glass, his voice is odd and low; the blood chills in her veins before she realizes… “Oh. The jacket. Sorry. I found it in Buffy’s closet. I thought… I needed something to wear to Willy’s.” He seems slightly confused, though she thinks she told him she went there before. Still, maybe his memory is uncertain, so she adds, “You know, the demon bar, the place where you get blood.”  
  
Now _he’s_ the one who seems vulnerable and she can see the turning of wheels in those eyes, no longer glass. It takes time, she realizes, for all the pieces to fit back into place after a century in Hell.   
  
Thanks to that creepy moment with the jacket, she’s got a second wind now, or maybe it’s her third, so she’s not fuzzy-headed at all, but even though it shouldn’t jar her – the way the next thing he says seems to come out of nowhere – it does, or maybe it’s the word itself. “Human.” He says it as if it’s the answer to a question, though if it is, it’s not one that Joyce ever asked and she’s experiencing a familiar feeling in a situation that’s anything but – the sense that there’s a conversation happening that’s going right over her head.   
  
“What do you mean?” she asks, thinking of all those other times in other places when she never dared.   
  
Thinking of all those times when Buffy said things that meant more than Joyce ever knew.  
  
Again, there’s a pause. That curious student in her brain watches and thinks that he lost ground in her absence, not all of it, but some, and she wonders... but she shifts gears back into focusing on the here and now. There’s a sentence coming, but he seems to need to take extra time to put the pieces together. Underneath a façade of fluctuating normalcy, it's clear that he’s not… the same? It feels odd to be so positive when it’s not as if she actually knew him before today, still…  
  
She’s about to say something when he speaks instead. “The blood – from Willy’s. It’s human.”  
  
Okay, she hadn’t actually thought about that, but now that she does… “Isn’t that what vampires eat… or drink? Not sure how you describe it,” she concludes with a short, self-deprecating laugh.   
  
Angel doesn’t seem all that amused by her awkwardness, but then again, he appears to be lost in thought, the effort of memory furrowing his brow and lining the corners of his eyes. “I didn’t… I got blood… somewhere… not…”  
  
Now both of them are confused. “Is there another demon bar? Should I have gone there instead?” Irrationally she’s irked with Willow, but she can’t help it: She’s the Slayer’s mother, dammit, and there are things she’s supposed to know. The number of demon bars in Sunnydale is most certainly among those things.  
  
“Not human.” That’s not actually a reply and it takes Joyce a moment to unscramble his words and realize what he means.  
  
Of course, that doesn’t mean she understands it at all. “You don’t drink… human blood?”   
  
Another pause and then there’s a shake of his head, tentative at first but ending with a kind of certainty. Now she’s _really_ confused. How does he live? “What do you drink?”  
  
“Cow… pig… I went… there was a butcher.” Is it her imagination or can she see the flash of images behind those brown eyes as he reclaims fragments of the life he lived what for him was a century ago?  
  
Then the ‘what’ of his words hits her and she’s… well, still confused, to be honest. How on Earth can a vampire live on the blood of cattle? She really needs to find some books or something or maybe try the internet. All the kids are on it these days… and didn’t Buffy once say something about that teacher, Jenny… call her a technopagan? Of course she immediately changed the subject and Joyce had stupidly dismissed the remark as teenage foolishness, but now that she thinks about it, she realizes that the internet might actually be a useful resource. In fact, aren’t computers Willow’s main interest? Is that what she does – use the computer to help Buffy? Oh how Joyce wishes she could at least ask the girl for some sites to try, but since that’s off the table, she’s going to have to wing it. Still, she has a computer of her own and she’s a college graduate. How hard can it be?  
  
Then she remembers Buffy’s struggles with email.   
  
The bag in her lap shifts and opens and the smell of rapidly-cooling hamburger fills her nostrils and reminds her of her empty belly. “Umm… speaking of cows,” she says, wincing at her ham-handed segue, “Do you mind if I eat this?” She realizes just how hungry she really is when she doesn’t wait for his answer before pulling out her drink and setting it on the table then grabbing the imposingly large burger and beginning to eat it. It’s a whole lot better than the food at the Doublemeat Palace. “Mmm,” she moans, before remembering she’s not alone. Is she blushing?   
  
Yes, Joyce, you’re blushing.   
  
She tries to ignore the feel of Angel’s eyes watching her every move, but the joy is pretty much gone from the burger experience as she finishes it and then eats about half of the obscenely generous order of fries. Does In ‘n Out have a contract with the state of Idaho? They must if they’re giving out this many fries on a regular basis.   
  
Is it her imagination or is it suddenly taking a lot of effort to chew and swallow? Between that and the now-leaden heaviness of her eyelids, she realizes that third wind is no longer filling her sails. Oh great. Because Angel notices. “You need sleep.”  
  
It would be wonderful if she could at least muster up enough energy to drive home, but even trying to offer to do so is beyond her. “I’ll… I’ll take a nap on the couch.”  
  
He shakes his head and before she knows what’s happening, she’s being lifted into Angel’s arms and carried up the stairs. You know, this was always the part where romance novels lost her and it’s no different now. She feels helpless, not feminine, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Angel is probably right about her ability to navigate a staircase on her own, she’d be kicking and screaming in as unladylike a manner as possible.  
  
Soon, however, they’re in a bedroom that she’s relieved isn’t his and he’s laying her down on a bed. What she does manage is to sit up immediately. “Thanks,” she says reflexively though she’s not feeling genuinely grateful.   
  
But instead of either saying ‘you’re welcome’ or leaving, he just stands there, staring at her, and she wonders, her fatigue making her thoughts loopy and disjointed… does he want his jacket back? Without thinking, she takes it off and hands it to him. Too late she remembers that all she’s wearing underneath is a stretched-taut tank top.   
  
For a split second, the look he gives her is all predatory male and she can feel the blood go cold in each one of her veins, but then… then, eyes gone back to blank glass, he takes off his robe as if to return… the favor? The view? Whichever it is, he hands the robe to her without a word then turns on his heel and leaves the room.  
  
If she’s smart, she’ll stay awake. But she can’t. In fact, she barely manages to get the robe on over her clothes before she winds up prone on the silk duvet, fast asleep.  
  
Her dreams are full of shadows and the screams of caught prey.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	12. Chapter 12

Answering Prayers (Chapter Twelve)  
  
  
  
It’s still dark when she wakes up and Joyce is still tired, but she can’t go back to sleep. Not nearly exhausted enough now to sleep in the same house as a vampire, even though she did wake up alive… she thinks. Inhaling deeply, she concentrates on the sensation of taking air into her lungs as she searches her neck with each hand. Okay. Yes. Still alive. Her exhalation is relief and gratitude, uncertainty and wonder and not a little disquiet.   
  
She pulls the robe around herself tighter as she gets up and then ties the sash around her waist. No, she doesn’t think Angel will be up and about, but… let’s just say that she’s starting to regret raiding Buffy’s closet, even if it did help her get some street cred – that _is_ the phrase, right? – at Willy’s.  
  
There’s a bathroom attached to the bedroom, so she uses it and washes her face and hands as well. No shower, though she’d sure like one. Yes, she knows she’s being ridiculous and silly and grossly inflating the meaning of Angel’s glance at her chest, but she’s still not comfortable with the idea of being naked here. So instead she decides to go back downstairs. She’s hungry again and she’s pretty sure there’s a few fries and some flat soda left from last night’s fast food run.  
  
Tip-toeing in an almost comical attempt at stealth, she makes her way to the staircase and is about to head down when she feels a hand on her shoulder. “Ahhh!” she shrieks as she whips around to face the shadowy figure who touched her. “Angel?”  
  
“Sorry,” he says, though she can’t see his face well enough to tell whether he’s apologetic or amused. A moment later he moves away and then there’s light. Electricity does make this place a little less foreboding, though she’s still calming her racing heart.   
  
“I was just surprised, that’s all. I thought you’d still be sleeping.”  
  
“I wasn’t sleeping.” For a brief second she sees… fear? Is that what was in his eyes? It confuses her until the fog in her brain clears enough… oh. Nightmares. He’s afraid of them. Or maybe he’s afraid that _this_ is a dream and that if he closes his eyes, he’ll wake up in Hell. Either way, she remembers that he’s a traumatized man and the anxiety she felt… well, it’s not gone, but it’s subsumed by compassion.   
  
She tries to put a bright spin on things. “I guess… being back from…you probably just want to keep taking it all in, huh?” She’s so awkward that it pains her, but Angel half smiles and so maybe she did her job. “I was going downstairs to eat the rest of my fries.” When she says it, she thinks it’s the signal for him to go back to his room, but instead he gestures for her to go… and then follows her.  
  
Yes, she wants to tell him that she’d like to be alone, but it’s his house and it would be extremely rude and ungracious, so she heads back to the front room without saying a word to her shadow. The fries and soda are right where she left them, but he’s staring at her and… “You know, I’m not really hungry after all. I think I’ll just go home.” Why she hadn’t thought of that option earlier escapes her, but better late than never, right?  
  
“You’re afraid of me.”   
  
Is she? “You’re a vampire,” she offers by way of explanation, and it’s a perfectly good one.   
  
She actually expects him to agree with her, just as he had earlier, but instead there’s “I won’t hurt you,” and it’s a plea.  
  
Something clicks and she’s not sure at all how she knows this, but she does. “You were alone.”   
  
He knows what she’s talking about and nods.  
  
Her mind whirls, trying to grasp the concept of a world where agony can be inflicted in a vacuum – no one there to do the dirty work, even as the torment goes on and on. Or is it just the isolation itself that is the torture? She’s read articles about the effects of prolonged solitary confinement on prisoners, like at Pelican Bay, and how human rights groups consider it torture, and she agrees, but those men are human beings. She has no idea what even a century of forced solitude would do to a demon. Would it be enough to damage Angel?   
  
If she’s going to understand… help him…  
  
There are questions she’d told herself she wasn’t going to ask.   
  
With a pat of the couch as invitation, he sits far enough away from her not to encroach on her personal space, even as she encroaches on _his_. “What happened to you there?”  
  
The look on his face… the predator transformed into wounded prey. Her first reaction is, of course, to try and comfort him and soften the blow. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I just… it might help.” Without thinking, she reaches across, leaning towards him, and puts her hand over his. “I won’t tell anyone else. I promise.”  
  
His eyes lock onto hers and she can almost feel him probing, searching, making sure. There is silence for what feels like an hour, but then he speaks, transformed back to the faltering, stumbling uncertainty of his first moments. “I… it’s… cold… hot… dark… fire…”   
  
It takes her a minute but she gets it – all of a sudden and in a rush of insight: Hell is nothing like anywhere on Earth and trying to find words to conceptualize its horrors is ultimately futile. Which means that the pain and the terror can never be shared, only held in the mind of someone who’s been there, which means…  
  
In a way, Angel hasn’t left, will never leave, _can_ never leave.  
  
Squeezing his hand and trying to pour us much sympathy from her touch and her gaze as she can, she says, “I understand,” even though she realizes the laughable hubris of her words.  
  
But they mean something to Angel. Again his eyes lock with hers and in a voice husky with emotion, she hears, “Thank you.” His hand is over hers now and his is the one holding tight.  
  
There’s… something.   
  
So much has changed today and never once in her life has Joyce gone through a mental and emotional rollercoaster to equal that she’s been on in the past twenty-four hours, but right now, in this moment, a switch has been flipped in a room somewhere and there’s a light she can’t see and…   
  
Is she being melodramatic? Part of her wishes that were the case. Oh if she could just be Hank’s pragmatic ‘Joycie’ and file this away under ‘reasons not to eat fast food right before bed’ but she can’t. Because she lives in a world where demons are real and little girls are tasked to slay them and shy bookworms cast spells and…  
  
Single moms go to demon bars and flirt with vampires while buying blood.  
  
This is not the world as she knew it, but it’s the world as it is.  
  
It’s the world where she’s sitting beside her daughter’s lover, staring into eyes so much older than her own, and realizing that it’s possible she knows this man better – or at least very differently – than her daughter ever did.   
  
She should go home; she really should go home.  
  
“Do you want to talk about something else? We can talk about anything, it’s up to you.”  
  
His eyes are full of gratitude. She leans back against the couch.  
  
She’s staying.  
  
  
To be continued…


	13. Chapter 13

Answering Prayers (Chapter Thirteen)  
  
  
  
Add this to the list of odd things Joyce has experienced today, but when she offered to talk about anything Angel wanted, she had expected the conversation to be about him and instead…   
  
Instead Angel is asking her, “What about you?”  
  
“Me?” She wonders if what he really wants to know is more about her daughter, but then… no, she remembers his reaction to even the mention of Buffy’s name and she figures maybe he really _is_ asking about her. The problem is that she has no idea what to say. She sticks with the obvious: the Reader’s Digest condensed version. “I was born right here in California. I’m divorced. I own an art gallery. I’ve got two sisters. I used to have a niece, but she died.” With a pang she remembers Celia and the profound nature of her sister’s grief; the clink of bottle against glass and a slurred voice over the phone. “Lolly never got over that.” Will _she_ dive into alcohol if Buffy never comes home? Spend her life by a sewing machine the way Lolly does. She thinks about the curtains and tablecloths Lolly once lovingly made for her family and friends. She doesn’t make them anymore. No, now she makes nothing but endless dresses for little girls who aren’t hers… or anyone’s. Dresses that sit in stacks until they’re donated to the Salvation Army or thrown away by the well-meaning neighbors who are closer to her now than Joyce is, though at least she calls now and then.   
  
That’s more than she can say about Arlene.  
  
Arlene never even came out for the funeral. Too expensive, she’d said, to fly in from Illinois. She has children too, but Joyce has never met them. How sad and strange is that? “I have two nephews also, James and Todd, but I’m afraid I don’t know much about them. Arlene and I… we’re not close.” Which is no excuse for not having tried harder to at least be something of an aunt; she feels guiltier and more self-centered and heartless by the second.  
  
Why is she telling any of this to Angel?  
  
He seems oddly – and disturbingly – fascinated by the mundane facts she’s shared. Does he somehow see the rest of the story swirling beneath the surface of her words?  
  
His eyes are piercing and his gaze unnerves her so badly that she stumbles into graceless prying. “Do you… silly question, I mean _did_ you have family? Before you became… you know?”  
  
There’s a pain in his eyes now that’s new to her but it’s blistered and red like old scars awakened from slumber beneath layers of skin meant to guard them. “I… I had a sister.” Something in the way he says it brings tears and apprehension all at once. If there’s one thing of which she’s absolutely certain, it’s that she doesn’t want to know…   
  
“I killed her.”  
  
… what Angel has just told her. Especially since something in the way he says it makes her fear that even worse memories lie buried under those three words. Please don’t let them rise from their graves.   
  
She can’t handle this.  
  
A month and a few days ago, she was just another divorcee with a troubled teenage daughter and now….  
  
Now a vampire is holding her hand as he confesses unspeakable crimes.  
  
Again she thinks she should leave, go home, maybe even call Willow and tell her…   
  
But she won’t. She’ll stay right here on this couch in this cold, forbidding place. She’ll be Angel’s confidante and she’ll keep his secrets, all of them.  
  
The room where that switch was flipped is still far down a hall, but her footsteps are taking her closer.  
  
He’s staring again and his hand is draining warmth from hers. (Blood, she thinks, would it drain as easily?) “This isn’t how you usually dress, is it?”   
  
The observation comes out of nowhere and it unsettles her. She’s pretty sure that was his intention.  
  
“Uh no.” She chuckles in a self-deprecating way, suddenly feeling old and rather silly in her ripped jeans and Buffy’s tank top. Good thing she’s wearing the robe… but Angel is staring as if he can see right through it.  
  
Oh my. Can he? She’s not all that sure about vampire powers, come to think of it, except for that sense of smell thing she learned about at Willy’s. Oh, and the ‘game face’.  
  
And the power to hurt her little girl. Can’t forget that.  
  
But she needs to focus on the here and now, doesn’t she? Because Angel’s eyes are taking her in in a way she hasn’t experienced… well, not for a long time, though it feels like never, and maybe it is since he’s a demon and that has to make a difference.  
  
She’s at a disadvantage, and while it’s good that _she_ knows it, it’s not at all good that Angel does.  
  
“It suits you,” Angel says, his voice creating uncomfortable ripples in the silence that occupied a too long moment after her laugh.  
  
“Not really,” she counters, realizing as she says it that she might not want to start an argument with a traumatized vampire newly returned from Hell. So she tries to blunt the impact with levity. “It’s a good thing no one from the PTA saw me in these clothes.” It doesn’t feel like she’s wearing the robe at all and she’s suddenly very aware of the feel of cheap spandex fabric stretched tight across a body that’s a bit more ample than her daughter’s.   
  
She decides that the conversation needs to move off the topic of her and the first thing that pops into her head is, “You’re an artist, aren’t you?”  
  
His expression clouds for a moment before his eyes narrow. He’s sizing her up – not unlike that vampire at Willy’s – wondering why she’s asking, and it occurs to her that her innocent question might easily not have been were it asked by… well, lots of people, she supposes. Maybe it shouldn’t have been innocent coming from _her_. Too late now. She smiles a warm, maternal smile and she thinks she sees… is it mirth? Too fleeting for her to tell, and anyway, she isn’t sure what she’d do if she knew, so maybe it’s better not.  
  
“Yes.”   
  
One word does not a conversation make, so Joyce realizes she has some work to do. “Are you a painter? A sculptor?”  
  
“I… I used to sketch.” He hesitated again but she doesn’t think it’s because the memory was hard to reach. “I like the feel of a pencil in my hand. The immediacy of it.” He’s abandoned the past tense, getting lost in reverie but what strikes Joyce is the irony of a vampire, a creature with more time than most, cherishing his art for how quickly it springs to life.  
  
Or maybe it’s not ironic at all. “I can see where you’d need to…” Think before you speak, Joyce. She was about to be very presumptuous and she stops before the sentence can emerge full-form and probably very silly.  
  
He nods, urging her to continue. It’s a gesture, not an order, but somehow she feels compelled… “I guess… I don’t know what it’s like, to live forever or anything, but I suppose it’s harder to hold onto things, to moments and memories. Even with photographs. They’re not the same. I guess maybe I thought that sketching…”  
  
His eyes lock tight on hers and what she sees is both frightening and flattering all at once. “You see,” he says, and a part of her thinks this might be the greatest compliment she’s ever received, though she’s not sure why.  
  
Wonder of wonders, he seems as uncomfortable with the moment as she is, because his eyes shift first and this time he’s the one who steers the conversation into more innocuous terrain. “So. How did you wind up owning an art gallery?”  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	14. Chapter 14

Answering Prayers (Chapter Fourteen)  
  
  
  
“I’m hoping to organize an exhibit of contemporary African art, maybe something along the lines of what Meschac Gaba is trying to do - creating a space that's different from the traditional Western concept. I’d love to show some pieces by this wonderful sculptor, Sokari Douglas Camp. I touched base with one of my old instructors a few weeks ago and he knows her, so it's possible I could get him to put in a good word for me. Then there’s an up and coming artist: Abdoulaye Konate…” Joyce has been going on and on for what seems like ages and she stops, terrified she’s boring Angel, the way she always bored Hank when she talked about the art she loved. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ve been monopolizing the conversation.”  
  
“Don’t apologize. I… I am ashamed that I don’t know any of these artists. I guess I just… All I know is European art.”  
  
There’s something she should say, something polite and dismissive of his concerns, but Joyce is stunned silent by the notion that she knows something that someone hundreds of years old knows nothing about and it’s… weirdly empowering. “I could loan you some books and some art journals,” she offers and the light in his eyes is something to behold.  
  
“You would? I’d like that.” He smiles and she can tell he really means it. Guess that answers the question of whether he remembers how to read. In fact, he seems fine again, the way he’d been right before she left and came back to find him regressed nearly back to what he’d been when he first returned. Being alone is bad for him, clearly.  
  
She continues. “I think you’ll really find African art fascinating. There’s a rich history and such a vibrant contemporary scene. The installations I’m reading about… If I wasn’t a mother, I guess I’d be in London right now. That’s where most of the big African exhibits are happening. I envy those galleries. I’ll never have the resources to do anything like what they do.”  
  
Are those tears she can feel in her eyes? God it’s been so long since she’s even acknowledged to herself that there’s any passion in her life remotely equal to that of being Buffy’s mother, but there is and it’s art and she’s never going to be any of the things she once dreamed of and… dammit, it hurts. She’s a spurned wife and a mother without a child and a failed artist who owns a pitiful little gallery.   
  
This is not who she thought she was going to be. A part of her almost wishes she could go back in time, get bitten by some vampire, change it all… but then…  
  
She’d have never had Buffy.   
  
For all the pain and the loss and the fear, she loves her daughter with all her being and she wouldn’t give up being her mother to own the best gallery in all the world.  
  
“Today isn’t forever,” Angel says and she startles. Guess she was really lost in her thoughts.  
  
“Thank God for that.” She laughs, but it’s a weary, almost fragile sound.   
  
To her shock and confusion, Angel seizes on those first two words. “Do you believe in God?” He’s serious, eyes locked on hers, pleading for an answer, for something to grasp.  
  
Simply saying ‘yes’ isn’t the right thing now; besides, it’s… not complicated so much as she is startled to make a connection all of a sudden. “I was praying – when you came back, I mean. Right before you appeared, I was praying.” Oh my. She was praying for Buffy and then there was Angel… and maybe there’s no cause and effect here because she’s always felt it was a little arrogant to assume… but what if…?   
  
Again, he takes her hand and holds it, tight this time, eyes still boring into hers. “You were?”  
  
She nods emphatically. “I was.”  
  
There’s a look of almost childlike wonder in his eyes and he doesn’t ask the nature of her prayers. She doesn’t volunteer it, either; she knows without asking that the topic of Buffy is still very much taboo.  
  
“I never thought…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but she thinks she gets it. After all, he knows what he is.  
  
“You’re here,” she says, because she thinks maybe it’s the right thing to say and also because she can’t think of anything else and silence just feels wrong.  
  
“Thank you,” he says, as if she really is responsible and she wants to demur but she doesn’t and she feels overwhelmed by the kind of questions she hasn’t pondered at all since college…  
  
… and why does every moment with Angel take her right back to dorm rooms and lecture halls and the shining openness of being young?  
  
“In the bright lexicon of youth, there is no such word as fail,” she says softly to herself; too softly, she’s sure, for Angel to hear.  
  
Of course, she’s forgotten the lesson she should have learned at Willy’s. “I wish that were true,” Angel says, eyes grown foggy with remembrance of a time far further back than Joyce’s memory can go. “When I was young…” He pauses and she waits for some detail about the man he’d once been, but all she gets is, “I did nothing but fail.”  
  
She knows better than to contradict him – or to ask questions. Instead she stumbles blindly into clichés. “Mistakes. The only thing to do is learn from them.” She shakes her head at herself. “God that was a stupid thing to say. Some mistakes…”  
  
“…you can’t learn from,” Angel finishes, smiling at her in a way that’s not patronizing at all though she probably deserves it.  
  
“No, you can’t. You can survive them, maybe, and hope like anything they never happen again, but… No, you don’t learn anything except how awful it is to hurt.”  
  
He’s looking at her now with something like awe and before she realizes it, she feels something against her cheek.   
  
It’s Angel’s hand. “You know,” and it sounds like nothing anyone has ever said to her. There’s reverence there and she thinks he’s giving her far more credit than she deserves because she’s never been to Hell and never been a demon and if he thinks she understands, at least intellectually, then he’s very, very wrong.  
  
“I know that you paid for mistakes you never made,” comes out of her mouth without thought and she can hardly believe she said it… probably because it’s true and she only realizes that _after_ her own voice sounds in her ears.  
  
His hand stays on her shoulder, thumb resting against her throat in a way of which she’s acutely aware. She thinks he could snap her neck if he wanted… and that he never will. “Am I different from him?” he asks her.  
  
“I think so,” she answers carefully. “I think you’re always a demon, but sometimes… like now, you’re more, if that makes sense. We both know you’re not human and you won’t be. But… that doesn’t mean you’re evil. Humanity – it doesn’t make anyone pure or good . It just…is. Plenty of human beings with souls have committed unspeakable crimes. Worse things than you’ve ever done or could ever do.”   
  
What did she say? Because he’s on his feet before she even realizes what’s happening, back to her… and then he turns.  
  
Ridges and fangs and yellow eyes and she can barely recognize him… but then she does and she sees…  
  
“You want me to leave? Fine, I’ll go. But not because you’re evil or because you scare me. I’ll leave because I’m a guest who’s overstayed her welcome.” Her eyes stay on him as she takes off his robe, not allowing herself to react to the way his eyes once again take in her body. She’s about to turn and get her purse, lying on the floor by the couch, but then he changes… again. His face handsome, eyes tormented.  
  
“Stay.”   
  
You know, this is the moment where a sensible woman would realize she’s dangerously close to swimming too far out to sea and turn back and make for shore.  
  
Joyce sits back down on the couch, expression softened though not smiling and remembers that this moment, internal dialogue included, closely resembles one from earlier in the day... and it's ending the same way. “All right, I’ll stay.”  
  
Please let this not be one of those mistakes from which she's never learned.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	15. Chapter 15

Answering Prayers (Chapter Fifteen)  
  
  
  
The last thing Joyce remembers is Angel asking her how she became so interested in African art.  
  
With a start, her eyes open into total darkness. She can barely breathe; she’s in a box, tight, black and airless. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.  
  
Lying on her back, facing up… she’s buried alive.  
  
She made a mistake – a horrible terrible mistake – when she stayed, when she decided to trust Angel and now it’s too late and she’s in a coffin. That’s what her hands tell her anyway, as they claw against satin and wood. Scratch, scratch, scratch – the noise of her own nails mingled with the rasp of her shallow, desperate breath sounding as loud as an explosion in her ears.  
  
How did this happen? She doesn’t remember… can’t remember… can’t think…only knows one thing… one word…  
  
Out. Out. OUT! She has to get out! But she can’t get out and…  
  
… she jolts awake, sitting upright, eyes drinking in light, breath still coming in short, panicked bursts, the frantic quest for air. Angel is by her side in seconds. “Are you all right?” A reflexive jerk back and she sees the pain in his eyes at her action.  
  
“I’m…” She’s still panting and it takes her a moment to compose herself enough to finish a sentence. “I had a nightmare. Sorry.” Focus, Joyce. Deep breaths. Looking down at her own hands, unbloodied by frantic efforts at escape – no she can’t close her eyes – she concentrates on filling her lungs. At last the air calms her down. She looks up… and sees a sketch pad and pencil on the table. “You were drawing me?”  
  
He seems almost embarrassed and looks away… shyly? But then he nods. “You looked… I just… I want to remember you.” Joyce shivers because there’s a ‘something’ in the way he says it… But no, she doesn’t ask him to explain. She’s honest enough to acknowledge that she doesn’t want to know and that she’s glad of the fact that this time she has a choice in the matter.  
  
“May I see it?” Her voice is tentative, part of her still wary of Angel after that terrifying dream.   
  
For a moment, he hesitates, but then he reaches over, picks up the pad, and hands it to her.   
  
Oh my.  
  
Whatever she expected to see? This isn’t it. This is not the Joyce whose face looks back at her from the mirror every day. No, this woman is years younger, but wise… and sensual. Even in repose, there’s something… this is a woman sleeping in the bed of her lover. It’s startling and she’s uncomfortable about it. “Is this… this is how you see me?”  
  
His eyes narrow and she can see the glint of gold and the sharpness of a predator. He nods and she almost shivers, wishing she was wearing that robe – knowing that it would make no difference. “You’re beautiful,” he says as if that’s all there is to it, even though it isn’t and they both know it.  
  
“Thank you.” That’s what she’s supposed to say, so she says it. It occurs to her that there’s something more than unseemly about the fact that she’s been ogled by her daughter’s boyfriend.   
  
Well, _ex_ -boyfriend might be more accurate given that he lost his soul and Buffy had to send him to Hell.  
  
Weirdly, she has to suppress a chuckle at that observation.  
  
Okay, it’s very strange that she’s so flippant all of a sudden. She may have become far too comfortable too quickly with the topsy turvy craziness of her world.   
  
Or maybe it’s just a way to hide from how _un_ comfortable she is with the way she looks in Angel’s eyes.  
  
“What were you thinking about?”  
  
Angel’s tone is accusatory and Joyce is so discomfited that before she can think better of it, she answers, “Buffy.”  
  
Oh god. She said it… said _that_ name. For a moment, she’s afraid, but Angel… he looks sad and almost lost, but not angry at all and there’s none of the fear he’d evinced before. It occurs to her… “Were you thinking of her? When you were sketching?” It would explain a lot, that’s for sure.  
  
The expression on his face makes it clear that her explanation isn’t correct. “No. I wasn’t thinking about Buffy.” The way he says her name… it’s as if Joyce’s baby could be any one of a hundred girls and the Mom in her is immediately on the defensive.  
  
“You love her,” she says in a tone that clearly expects – no, _demands_ – agreement.   
  
So he agrees… “I loved her.” And he doesn’t.  
  
The past tense sends a chill down her spine. “What do you mean?”  
  
“It’s been a hundred years. A lot has happened.” That’s an understatement, isn’t it, and if the devoted Mommy can’t begin to understand anyone ceasing to love Buffy, the woman who’s been nursing a vampire just returned from Hell can see the toll taken and the changes wrought by each of those horrific years and has to concede that nothing could ever possibly be the same.  
  
Still, she’s unsettled and unhappy and so she shrugs and offers a dispirited, “Yeah. I guess you’re right,” before looking away.  
  
“She’s the only woman I ever loved.” Joyce turns back, trying to find out whether Angel is being sincere or conciliatory by searching his eyes for the truth. She believes him; if that’s naïveté on her part, well, that’s one more thing she doesn’t want to know. She’d rather believe that at least her baby got some of what she deserves from the first man who ever held her heart.   
  
But even though she fully intends to say something maternal, what she says instead is “A vampire and a Slayer. That has to have been a first.” Where did that even come from?  
  
To her shock, Angel laughs. It’s a head-thrown-back, full sound that echoes through the cavernous room and she can’t help laughing right along with him. Joyce is here, but where Buffy’s mother is could be anyone’s guess.   
  
Maybe it’s where _here_ is that’s the big question because this place feels so far away from Hank and divorce papers and paying bills at the kitchen table.   
  
It feels far away from staring out the living room window hoping to see Buffy walking up the driveway.  
  
“Fook Island,” she says so softly that _she_ can barely hear it, but of course Angel does. She explains herself before he can ask. “It's... it's a place… well, not really a place. Walter Battiss created it as kind of a rebuke to the Conceptualists. It's an island. Not a real island… not one you could actually visit anyway. But he gave it a history, people, animals… he even designed currency and managed to exchange a banknote at the airport in Rome.” She breathes in and closes her eyes, feeling the sting of tears behind them. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”  
  
For the second time, she feels Angel’s hand against her cheek, but her eyes stay closed, her eyelids straining to hold back the emotion threatening to spill forth.  
  
They stay closed even as a tear escapes.  
  
This might be Joyce’s biggest mistake.  
  
A moment later she feels the soft pressure of lips against lips.  
  
Angel has just kissed her.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	16. Chapter 16

Answering Prayers (Chapter Sixteen)  
  
  
  
When Joyce opens her eyes, Angel is sitting, facing her, but not looking a bit like a man who’s just kissed his ex-girlfriend’s mother. She’s nonplussed by the calm demeanour and for a moment she wonders if she imagined the kiss, but then there’s a slight crinkling at the corner of his eyes…  
  
She gets it. Unsettling her maintains his advantage. He’s a demon and power is what it’s all about. Which, come to think of it, doesn’t make him that different from most _men_ , now does it? “You kissed me.” There, she said it, and she dares him to contradict it.  
  
He doesn’t. “I kissed you.” One short, sharp nod that seems oddly like a salute.  
  
“Why did you do that?” Because she’d really, really like to know.  
  
“You’re beautiful.” It’s the same reason he gave for sketching her and it’s even more ridiculous as an explanation now.  
  
No, she’s not letting it pass this time. “Do you kiss every woman you think is beautiful?” By the way, if the answer to that is yes… Buffy should have slain him long before she sent him to Hell.  
  
He chuckles mirthlessly as he eyes her shrewdly. She feels a chill like the one she had at Willy’s when she realized she was way out of her league. “No, I don’t.” The light in his eyes turns to hunger and she’s honestly and unquestionably afraid. “You have no idea, do you? How desirable you are.”  
  
This is a game and she has no idea how to play, let alone win, so she decides to try and upset the table. “You haven’t even seen a woman in a hundred years. Anyone would be desirable right now.” She punctuates the statement with a self-deprecating little laugh. If she were to grab her purse and make a run for it, could she make it to the door and out into the soft early light before he could catch her, if he even bothered to chase her, that is?  
  
“Why do you always do that?” Game _not_ over.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Put yourself down.” He reaches across and takes her hand before she can think to evade him. “You shouldn’t do that.”   
  
The gold in his eyes is an order and she has to fight the urge to say ‘yes, sir.’ “Okay,” she stammers instead.   
  
“I need to go feed,” he says suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, before he gets up and heads off to the kitchen. It’s then that she notices that the bags of blood are gone. Guess he put them away last night after carrying her up… to bed.   
  
She’s alone now and she could leave, _should_ leave, but for some reason she doesn’t flee. She does, however, follow Angel’s path to the kitchen just in time to see him pour blood into a mug and put it in the… “Microwave? You use the microwave?”  
  
He whips around but then grows eerily calm, turning back and punching a few buttons to start the machine before facing her once more. “It tastes better warm.” The way he says it…  
  
But she doesn’t let him get to her. “I guess I just never think of demons using technology. You’re a thoroughly modern vampire, I see.” She’s trying to be flip and cool, the Slayer’s mother. There’s that throaty laugh of his again, head thrown back, and without warning she hears herself say, “You weren’t like this with Buffy, were you?”  
  
The laughter stops and he’s giving her a look that’s shrewd but also tinged with a good dollop of respect. “No,” is all he says, but there’s a whole lot of story in the word and somehow it takes away the guilt she’s been feeling.  
  
Then there’s the mechanical ding of the microwave and Angel opens it, eyes never leaving her as he downs the contents of the mug. Is he imagining that he’s drinking _her_ blood? Is it strange that she’s wondering how she’d taste to him?  
  
Joyce, you are spending way too much time with vampires – well, with _one_ vampire.   
  
In an attempt to talk about something, _anything_ , innocuous, she blurts out, “How ‘bout those Mets?”  
  
What?  
  
This time, Angel isn’t the one laughing.  
  
So now she’s standing in a vampire’s kitchen, almost doubled over in hysterics, and before she realizes what’s happening, he’s right beside her again. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”  
  
The words stop her merriment cold. She could say the same thing to him, but a part of her is actually upset by his words. Is she nothing like her daughter? “Buffy’s a lot like I was at her age,” she says, chin forward – almost defiant.  
  
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”  
  
“Well, I wasn’t the Slayer,” she concedes.  
  
“You also weren’t Buffy.”  
  
All of Joyce’s insecurities, her fears that the only special thing about her is that once upon a time she gave birth to a Slayer, come to the fore now. “You don’t know that. You didn’t know…”  
  
“I was there. Before.” And his words hit like a slap to the face.  
  
“You were… you knew Buffy in Los Angeles?”  
  
A shake of the head and then he continues. “I saw her. The first time was the day before she was called.”   
  
His eyes bore right into her and she shudders but then something hits her. “That’s when you… she was 15. You were interested in my daughter when she was 15.” Her voice is accusatory and that’s as it damn well should be. He’s a grown man and he had no business finding a child attractive, finding _her_ child attractive.  
  
“When I saw… it was after she was called, really. When I saw the warrior she was going to be…” He gets lost for a moment in the memory and somehow Joyce can see the same fierce Amazon princess he did, or at least the shadow of one. She would give anything to be there, in a cemetery, watching Buffy slay something. That would be amazing wouldn’t it? Her girl has always been a natural athlete and she must be a sight to see taking down the forces of evil.   
  
Joyce wonders… “Do you think… do you think she’s still the Slayer? Wherever she is now?”  
  
“It’s not a job you can quit.”   
  
The tone in his voice reminds her uncomfortably of what happened to Kendra and that brings up more questions whose answers she never quite got in that lengthy kitchen conversation, like how there were two Slayers when there’s only supposed to be ‘one girl in all the world’ as Willow had phrased it, but she’s not in the mood to ask Angel about it because she’s still stuck on two things and one of them is… “Didn’t you think that maybe you were a little too old for her?”  
  
A short sardonic laugh is his response and then, “Slayers don’t live long enough for it to matter.” He pauses, seems to realize who the person to whom he’s just said this is. “Not usually, anyway. Then again, Slayers don’t have friends who back them up and they’re not as independent and creative as she is.”  
  
All the backpedaling in the world can’t undo what that first thoughtless sentence did and he notices. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so… cold. I did love her, you know. More than anything in all the years I’ve lived.”  
  
She nods. As apologies go, it’s mediocre at best, but she reminds herself that he’s freshly returned from Hell and while there are no marks on his body, the ones on his psyche are probably still bleeding. “When she comes back… what will you do?”  
  
There should be an answer, and maybe there will be, but apparently not yet. In Joyce’s world, newly-full of strange and unsettling things, there’s about to be one event stranger and more inexplicable than what’s gone before.  
  
Leaning in, Angel kisses her again.  
  
This time, it’s neither brief nor soft… and she doesn’t pull away.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	17. Chapter 17

Answering Prayers (Chapter Seventeen)  
  
  
  
Angel is kissing her like she hasn’t been kissed in… well, ever, if she’s honest about it, and while there are all kinds of excellent reasons for her to push him away and put a stop to this, she doesn’t.  
  
Maybe because she knows – _knows_ bone-deep – that this isn’t Buffy’s love she’s kissing. This is a man her daughter has never met, even if he has the same face, same memories, same body…   
  
But does what she knows make this okay? It’s probably not okay at all, but she’s still holding on, still letting Angel pull her close, moaning when his hands move lower – too low.  
  
Why is this happening?  
  
It’s not that she needs sex – okay, maybe she _does_ miss it, but that’s not what’s happening here, anyway. Too big a risk, right? Which brings up a good point. When Angel’s mouth finally leaves hers, she pants, “Your curse.”  
  
He looks into her eyes, half-smile – cocky and challenging – and his voice… there’s an accent and it surprises her. “Do ya think you can make me perfectly happy then?”   
  
Was he – is he…? “You’re Irish?” He winks – playful, dangerous, but she can see the flames burning behind his eyes – and she thinks about the words and not the tune as she answers his question. “No, no I don’t.” And she doesn’t. It’s not self-deprecation. Nothing could ever be perfect now – not for him, not even for her. They’re both jagged edges and pain.   
  
After all, losing your child is its own kind of Hell.  
  
She lets him kiss her again and she gives as good as she gets. When he moves to pick her up… this time it’s all right, she supposes, and she leaves done with the internal protest. It is, after all, the fastest way to get upstairs and one with which she can pretend she’s not entirely complicit. Still enough insecurity about the way Hank always reacted to any display of sexual agency on her part to fear Angel’s reaction to a bold stride up the staircase by his side.  
  
Now here they are: Angel’s room. It’s as lush and imposingly masculine – and sensual – as she remembered and she’s frankly intimidated. No firm-bodied teen or ageless vampiress she and she can’t help being sure she’ll be a disappointment, even to a man who’s been celibate for a century.   
  
He’s set her on her feet and it’s as if he can read her mind. “You’re beautiful.” He’s said the words before but this time… they’re husky with something… something different from desire. This isn’t a man desperate for sex, but he needs…   
  
If she’s honest, she’s looking for something else from this as well – nothing she can name, but still – it isn’t sex, not really, even if sex is the path she seems about to take to get there.   
  
His hands are at the button to her jeans and she lets him undo it, then pull the zipper down before she helps him with the more difficult business of sliding tight denim down thighs that aren’t as slim as they were when she bought these jeans.   
  
As for her shirt…  
  
Before she can stop him, he’s torn the cheap cotton right down the middle. “Hey!” she protests, but then he pulls her into his arms again and he’s kissing her in a way that leaves her lightheaded and… the hell with it. She doesn’t think about whose shirt this is that’s now in tatters on the floor or about the excuse she’ll have to come up with, but she’ll think about those things later and she’ll feel strange about it all the while.  
  
Now, though? Now he’s let her go again and made short work of the silk pajamas he was wearing and… yeah, she’s seen him naked before but not like this… not aroused. It’s both flattering and… Oh god. He really _is_ big.   
  
Her expression hasn’t gone unnoticed and he smirks, looking more demonic than ever in the dimly lit room. “Ya like?” There’s that brogue again and she shivers.   
  
Joyce, what are you doing here?   
  
She doesn’t know, but she’s all in.  
  
She steps toward him again. “I like. What about you?”  
  
“I like.” And then in seconds his mouth is on hers, harsher than ever and then they’re on the bed and…  
  
“Oh!” It’s been months, after all, and even then… She isn’t ready for this, isn’t ready at all, but somehow she knows – or doesn’t know, but it doesn’t matter…  
  
Her teeth are in his shoulder – just for a moment – but there’s the faint taste of copper on her tongue. She thinks he’s tasted her as well, but she doesn’t know. Lost, that’s what she is now, lost in the hurricane of it all.  
  
She can feel him inside her. Not just _there_ , but everywhere. In her mind, in her lungs, in the racing of her heart. He’s pounding her into the mattress and she hears the click of a woman’s heels on cobblestones and sees _him_ , long-haired and dressed the way he must have been when he was alive… she sees him surrounded by fire… and by corpses… sees a terrified little girl bound…  
  
Then her body calls her home – he’s good at this, too good, too much – and she screams, wordless and primal, as she arches into him, feeling an ecstasy that’s almost agony, and then he follows…  
  
“Joyce!”  
  
Her name. He was wholly and completely with her – with _her_ – wasn’t he, and that’s… it should be wrong, but it isn’t, or maybe it is but she just doesn’t care.   
  
Right now, her main concern is getting oxygen into lungs that seem unwilling to hold onto it, that’s how hard she’s panting.   
  
The silence between them isn’t comfortable, but it’s there and he’s beside her now, holding her close, stroking the sweat-damp strands that probably – at last – look nothing like soccer mom hair.   
  
Buffy. She should be thinking about Buffy right now, but that’s something which will only occur to her later. What she’s wondering now? What frightens her?   
  
Was she inside Angel the way he was inside her? Did he see... things? Curiosity, Joyce – it kills more than cats. But she asks anyway, in a tentative, halting voice she nearly fails to recognize. His teeth never scared her, but this… “I saw… did you…?”  
  
“You’re more than that, you know,” is his only reply and something clicks. It’s nothing she can put into a coherent thought, but still…  
  
“You too.” She can feel the burn of wanting – wanting to _know_ – burning along each nerve, but she can’t ask. Maybe if he did… but he doesn’t, so neither does she. Instead… “I need to go to the gallery today.” She’s looking away, but she feels him nod, so she takes it as permission and sits up, trying hard not to feel awkward about him seeing her naked. At least this is familiar. Why is it always difficult for her to handle a man seeing her naked after sex? So much more than it is before.  
  
Of course, as she gets up and finds her jeans and panties, she’s hit by a far more practical and immediate concern.  
  
“Would you mind if I borrow a shirt?”  
  
A throaty chuckle and, before she knows he's moved, he’s behind her, hands on hers as she finishes putting on her jeans. “Let me get one for you.”  
  
Something in the way he says it…  
  
He likes the idea of her wearing his clothes.  
  
It’s then that she thinks of the jacket… and of Buffy.   
  
She really, really needs to leave.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	18. Chapter 18

Answering Prayers (Chapter Eighteen)  
  
  
  
She’s in the car, conscious of the fact that there’s no bra under this white t-shirt – Angel’s white t-shirt – and she’s very glad she’s going straight home and won’t be seeing anyone between now and… well, whenever she leaves the house again after showering and maybe getting some much-needed sleep.  
  
Then she gets near her house and… Dammit! Rupert Giles is there. Doesn’t the man have a life? What in the hell is he doing at her house at – she looks at the dashboard clock – eight AM? Dammit again – he’s clearly seen her car and there’s no chance she can just turn around and find a motel or something where she won’t have to deal with people she knows while she tries to get a handle on everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours.  
  
Especially what’s happened in the past two.  
  
Well there’s nothing to be done now except deal with Mr. Giles. Maybe the sight of bouncing breasts will scare him off. She giggles. It’s possible. The man takes the concept of ‘stuffy’ to the highest level.   
  
So that’s settled. Joyce parks her car in front of her house – that damn Citroen is in her driveway _again_ – and, on impulse, knots the t-shirt at her waist before getting out. He’s discomfited the moment he sees her. Score one for post-sex self-confidence as she strides, hips swinging slightly, up to that ridiculous car and its even more ridiculous owner. “Any news?” she asks, no pleasantries or preamble, “Or is this a social call?”  
  
“I… er…” Oh lord. Is he…? He is. Or, as Buffy would say, he _so_ is. Yes, the girls have a captive audience. “I was… May I ask where you’ve been?” Is that disapproval? Because she could clearly hear the ‘dressed like that?’ even though he didn’t say it out loud. He’s got some nerve!  
  
“At the gallery. I was at the gallery unloading a shipment. Not exactly a job for a woman in a smart suit, so yes, I’m wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Is that a problem?” She doesn’t give him a chance to answer before she continues. “Good. I thought not. Because I not only _have_ to earn a living, I enjoy it. Being a woman with my own business. Working for myself. Doing all that ‘macho’ stuff like unloading crates and pounding nails and getting sweaty. I like it. I want to set an example for Buffy, too. Because I want her to grow into the kind of woman who controls her own life – who doesn’t let men make all the decisions for her.” On that last note, she glares at Mr. Giles, who’s about to interrupt.  
  
She doesn’t let him. “No. You don’t get to talk. This is my house. And by the way, I get that you and your Council consider Buffy to be _your_ Slayer, but let’s get one thing straight: She may _be_ your Slayer, but she’s _my_ daughter. That means that the keeping secrets and the lying and the withholding information stops and it stops now and forever. Because I’m Buffy’s mother. She is still my child and what concerns her concerns me. And if you think that I’m a weakling or a simpleton or that I can’t handle the truth, test me and you’ll see just how far the apple _didn’t_ fall from the tree.” She marches toward her house, then turns back. “Oh, and one more thing. Get the hell out of my driveway!”  
  
This time there’s no look back as she strides through her door and closes it forcefully behind her. Does Mr. Giles admire her? Fear her? Think she’s insane? Who cares? Because she’s had enough of him. Him and his judgement and his uselessness and his lies. Yes, she’s sorry that his girlfriend was murdered, but that’s because she’s sorry for the woman herself. Had she lived, she’d have probably wised up and realized that a man whose sole purpose in life is to come between girls and their mothers while leading those very girls out into the world of demons and vampires to be slaughtered well before their time isn’t a good long-term prospect.   
  
There on the coat rack is Buffy’s jacket. Her favorite. The one she left behind in her hurry to get out of town after she sent…  
  
Leaning back against the wall by the stairs, she sighs and slides down to the floor. Oh Joyce. What the hell have you done?  
  
You just had sex with the same…  
  
But he isn’t the same. Not only do her instincts tell her that but he himself said as much.   
  
That’s hair-splitting in a way, though, and she knows it, because Buffy… Buffy would never see it that way.  
  
You know, Angel was right when he said she wasn’t Buffy. Not ever. Because it’s true. If there’s one thing she both admires and fears in her daughter it’s her unshakeable belief in the order of things as she sees it. It’s an alien thing to Joyce – this blind, fierce will – and while she has no idea where it came from, she knows it’s going nowhere.  
  
Buffy will always be Buffy, no matter where she is or what she does.  
  
“Where are you?” she says softly, not expecting an answer of course, so unsurprised when the ensuing silence remains unbroken.   
  
She gets up, slightly awkwardly, conscious more than ever of the movement of her breasts against the fabric of Angel’s shirt, remembering that slow, unsettling half-smile as she put it on… as he watched her leave, still naked, conscious of it and yet completely comfortable.  
  
He’s dangerous. That’s something she finally gets in a way she knows her daughter didn’t. Buffy and her conviction, her unshakeable self-confidence.  
  
It’s a good thing though. Buffy’s a bumblebee and as long as she never finds out she can’t fly, she’ll keep on whizzing through the air – bright and self-possessed and sure of herself and her view of the world.   
  
If Buffy weren’t her child, Joyce would envy her as fervently as she loves her, but a mother can’t begrudge her child anything… well, not this mother, anyway, she amends, after a brief flicker of uncomfortable memory. No, she’s glad her daughter has all the gifts she possesses and Joyce would give her even more if she could.  
  
But Buffy’s not here.  
  
With a sigh, she trudges up the stairs, feeling the weight of fatigue like lead where her bones should be. Is she as old as Angel now?  
  
She stands in front of the mirror in her room, taking in the outline of breasts through white cotton… the sweat-disheveled hair…the flush of sex still in her cheeks. If Angel isn’t the Angel Buffy knew, even more is this woman not the Mom Buffy knew.  
  
Who is she? Who is she really?  
  
Twenty-four hours ago she knew the answer to that. Twenty-four hours ago, vampires and Slayers and witches were conversation over cocoa with a teenage girl.  
  
Not anymore.  
  
Inhaling, she can still smell the scent of what she was doing not long ago at all.  
  
God, she needs a shower.   
  
Pulling the t-shirt over her head, her eyes drift back to the mirror and she sees…  
  
…there’s a bite mark right there on her shoulder. Right where she knows she left one on Angel.  
  
Twenty-four hours ago… It was a lifetime.  
  
This is just one more in a long list of things she needs to deal with… but please let it be later. Right now, she wants nothing more than hot water and sleep – in that order. So Joyce finishes undressing and gets into the shower. Somehow, though, the soap and steam don’t wash anything away and when she gets out, she’s still the woman she’s become.  
  
Sometime soon, she’s going to have to figure out who that is.  
  
  
To be continued…


	19. Chapter 19

Answering Prayers (Chapter Nineteen)  
  
  
  
There’s a 4 glaring red in the hour space on her clock radio when Joyce awakens and it says a lot for how well-rested she _isn’t_ that it takes her a few moments to figure out that it’s PM and not AM.   
  
Maybe she shouldn’t have pulled the blinds closed.  
  
Hell, it probably made no difference.  
  
It’s all night all the time now, isn’t it? At least in the world in which Joyce has come to live.  
  
Damn it! She never even called Darryl at the gallery to tell him she wasn’t coming in – not that she knew that she was going to sleep the whole day away. Great, more fuel for the rumors she knows are circulating amongst her small staff – the ones where she’s becoming a lush, just like Lolly, though no one even knows she has a sister swimming in the bottom of a bottle about two hours’ drive from Sunnydale.  
  
Oh well. There’s nothing she can do about it now and what would she tell them anyway? “Sorry, Darryl. I need you to run things without me for a while because I’m worn out after sex with my daughter’s ex-boyfriend?” Yeah, that would go over famously and she’d wind up being called ‘Mrs. Robinson’ behind her back for as long as it took her to find a whole new staff. Or maybe she could tell them the _whole_ truth… you know, the part that includes vampires and demons and her daughter’s role as the Slayer. Buffy wouldn’t be the only one in the family who’d done time in the nuthouse after that, now would she?  
  
Yes, she still feels anguishing guilt for putting her child in that terrible place and no, she doesn’t consider ignorance, naïveté, Hank, or any combination thereof to be a good excuse for what she did.   
  
It’s 4 o’clock and it’s too late to go to the gallery but she doesn’t want to sit here alone in this empty house where all she’ll do is think, even though she has so much she needs to think about, so she gets up and goes to her closet, determined to find something of her own to wear to Willy’s. Why she feels compelled to go back there, she doesn’t know, but she does. Maybe she feels more at home among demons now.  
  
And isn’t _that_ a happy thought.  
  
She finds a sequined tank top her friend – well, former friend, since she can’t remember the last time they spoke – Allison made her buy years ago stuffed into the back of the closet and she pulls it out, deciding to pair it with yesterday’s jeans. Why not?  
  
The leather jacket is back at Angel’s so she finds a chambray shirt, pulls it on, unbuttoned, tied at the waist. She likes the look, though it’s probably not hip or cool or whatever, and she heads into the bathroom to fix her hair and put on a little makeup.   
  
When she looks in the mirror, she sees a woman she doesn’t know.  
  
She sees an old friend.  
  
She sees youth.  
  
She sees pain and death and something older than she’ll ever be.  
  
Who is she?   
  
She keeps staring into the eyes reflected in the glass and what she sees lurking in their depths is… it’s what she saw last night when Angel was inside her, but there’s more and she can’t make sense of it, doesn’t _want_ to might be more accurate, so she blinks and then stares again, not into the eyes, but just at the face before her until it becomes flat and other and she can paint it and fix its hair and not think of it as herself at all.  
  
The trick works and soon enough she’s grabbing her purse and heading out the door. It’s not until she gets into her car that she remembers Angel’s t-shirt, but she decides against going back to get it. She wants to be gone and she’ll worry about it later.  
  
It feels like only seconds have passed and here she is at Willy’s. Only now does she wonder what the heck she’s going to do or say here. Oh! Blood. Not like it’ll go to waste. She’s sure Angel will be happy to have a better supply.  
  
Of course, that means she’ll be seeing Angel sooner rather than later and… yeah, that isn’t something she’s thought about either. What the heck will she even say to him?  
  
Oh Joyce, what the hell have you gotten yourself into? You do know you should have stayed home and thought all this through, don’t you?  
  
Too late now, she’s already out of the car and at the door to this dive, so in she goes. There are nods and what might be smiles from a couple of demons she thinks she saw here before and… does this make her a regular? You know, maybe she could help Buffy when…  
  
But she won’t. She knows for certain that she won’t. In a sea of fog, one thing is completely clear: Buffy is never going to know just how far into her world her mother has ventured. If she knows her little girl at all, she knows that when her daughter returns, she’ll want her Mom, the Mom she’s always known, and even if that woman doesn’t exist anymore, Joyce will play the part. That’s how bone deep her love for Buffy goes.  
  
“What’ll it be this time? More blood?” Willy is talking… and leering. Stay in the present, Joyce.   
  
“Fancy meeting you here.” She spins around and – whoa – it’s the vampire she met last time. The old one.  
  
“It’s a small world,” she replies with a shrug, trying to be nonchalant even as she notices his nostrils flare and… oh dammit! She forgot and these jeans probably smell like… don’t blush. Whatever you do, don’t blush.  
  
The vampire throws back his head and there’s a sharp bark of laughter. “Well, well…” Then his voice goes low and he says, “Never thought he’d see the light and give up his foolish taste for the first pressing, but it looks like he finally appreciates… a fine vintage.”   
  
Joyce’s blood chills in her veins at the realization that, to this vampire, Buffy would only rank as one in a long line of virgins Angelus has despoiled, but she betrays none of her pain; instead she cocks her head playfully and raises an eyebrow before shrugging again, refusing to confirm or deny what they both know.   
  
She doesn’t stop him when he takes her hand and raises it to his lips. He doesn’t touch his mouth to her skin, though, and she knows why – knows what he thinks she is. “Tell Angelus that Oliver sends his regards.” With that, he’s gone. She has the strangest feeling that she’ll never see him again, though why she finds the feeling strange she doesn’t know.  
  
“Here you are. The specialty of the house.” Time to turn back around because there’s Willy with a large bag of blood. Once again he never asks for money, just tells her to ‘come back anytime’ and she gets the sense that he’s cueing her to leave. Which she does… out the back just as she hears voices she recognizes from the front.   
  
Oh god! Willow and Xander are here. .. and they must have seen her car!  
  
  
To be continued…


	20. Chapter 20

Answering Prayers (Chapter Twenty)  
  
  
  
Willow and Xander. Joyce narrowly missed being caught by them inside Willy’s but it probably doesn’t matter because it’s an almost-certainty that they saw her car parked outside and… oh hell. She gets in, starts the engine, and floors it to get away from there as fast as she can. Kind of a metaphor for what she’s been doing since she got up: racing away from dealing with anything.   
  
You know, the reason it was so darn easy for Buffy to fool her for so long might have less to do with a daughter’s gift for guile and an unethical Watcher than with Joyce’s desire not to deal with painful and difficult truths.  
  
Okay, she can face that, maybe even change it.  
  
She still despises Rupert Giles, though.  
  
Her original intent had been… well, she’s not sure, but she hadn’t thought in terms of an immediate return to Angel’s place. That’s where she’s going, however, because – in the spirit of confronting things – they really do need to talk about what happened last night.  
  
Yes, Mrs. Robinson, you slept with the man your daughter loves; that’s the truth as almost everyone would see it, except perhaps Angel himself… and you. The two opinions that should matter most but ultimately matter least.  
  
Dear god, what has she done?  
  
Time to figure that out. A few minutes of driving and she’s back at the mansion, navigating the crumbling steps with a familiarity she shouldn’t have in such a short amount of time, and making her way inside carrying the latest batch of blood. “Angel?” she calls out, wondering if he’s awake and downstairs or if…  
  
“I’m glad you’re back.” And there he is, a wife beater and jeans on… along with a sensual half-smile she finds more irritating than arousing.  
  
“Figured you might need more blood. I’m not sure how much vampires eat, but what with… well, I guess it’ll keep.” Nice backpedaling there, Joyce. Nothing says ‘we need to talk about something important’ like mindless chitchat.  
  
The half-smile grows cocky and Joyce’s irritation grows right along with it. “Thanks.” He reaches out to take the bag, letting his hand linger on hers just a beat too long. Whatever he lost in Hell, it sure as heck wasn’t his self-confidence.  
  
Still, she follows him to the kitchen without calling him on the arrogance, so… oh, Joyce. Grow a backbone. Isn’t yours supposed to be the feminist generation?   
  
So here they are – the site of their second kiss – the one that led right upstairs. She can recall every bit of what happened and… no, she still doesn’t understand it.  
  
He’s putting the blood into the refrigerator now, back turned to her, silent and not the least bit tense, and she starts to think that maybe there won’t be any drama at all. Maybe she’s just overcomplicated everything in her own mind. Maybe she’s the only one who’s even thinking about last night at all.  
  
Was it simple for him? Was she just a welcome piece of ass after a century of torment? A band-aid on the wounds her daughter left? As strange as it seems, she’s actually hoping that’s the case. It sure would make everything easier; she can just walk away, chalk last night’s roll in silk sheets up to a mid-life crisis and parental grief on her own part, and lock it away in the back of her mind. Avoid the kind of intense discussion that frightens her as much as all her magazines say it turns off men.  
  
As if anything could ever be that easy.  
  
“I missed you.” The smirk has turned into a half-smile gone soft and vulnerable and Joyce’s hopes shatter like glass – the rose-coloured glass through which she’s always tried to see her life.  
  
But you know, she isn’t going to give up without a fight. “Yeah, well, I’m the only person you’ve seen for a hundred years.”   
  
She’s about to say more but he glowers and interrupts. “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to do that anymore. Put yourself down.” Then he moves closer to her; she can feel each step.  
  
This isn’t likely to lead to productive discussion but Joyce doesn’t know how to avoid… suddenly she blurts out, “Willow and Xander saw me. At Willy’s. Well, they saw my car anyway. Probably. I think so. I was heading out the back door just as they came in and my car was parked right outside so they have to have seen it.”  
  
For a moment he doesn’t speak and she’s about to ask if he remembers them, but then he says, “So what?”  
  
So what? Did he just say ‘so what’? “I don’t know how I’m supposed to explain what I was doing at Willy’s.”  
  
“Looking for information about Buffy,” he says with a dismissive shrug.   
  
She’s insulted, even if he does have a point, and she’s not going to let it slide. “I get that my life isn’t your concern, but you know, I’m not used to having to explain myself to teenagers.” And, since she’s too wound up after everything she’s gone through to think before she speaks, she adds, “I’m also not used to sleeping with vampires who used to date my daughter, so excuse me if I’m not nonchalant enough for you.”  
  
The elephant in the room is now standing in the spotlight.   
  
“I’m not…,” he begins, and she realizes it’s what she would have expected him to say… but she’s not having it.   
  
Because she can’t. “You and I both know that no one else would see it that way. They’re not looking at the metaphysics of the situation. And it’s probably all bullshit anyway. Maybe you just wanted to compare the two of us. I don’t know. What I do know is…” Tears are in her eyes now as it all comes crashing in on her. “What I do know is that my little girl would never forgive me if she knew.”  
  
This isn’t the way she’d sort-of-envisioned this talk. She thinks she recalls a large, drafty front room and two rational adults sitting on a couch having a dry, reasoned conversation when she saw this playing out in her head on the way over. There hadn’t been tears, that’s for sure.  
  
If there’s anything she should have learned by now, it’s that nothing is ever going to be what she expected ever again.  
  
Because there’s no couch either, and there are no rational adults anywhere to be seen.   
  
No, instead, they’re in the kitchen, not really talking; she’s in Angel’s arms and she’s crying against that ridiculously macho shirt and the last thing she wanted is… but then he…  
  
He kisses her again and she realizes that she doesn’t have anything figured out at all and things are anything but okay but she’s not stopping him. “This has nothing to do with Buffy.” There’s absolute sincerity in his eyes and she wonders how anyone can be so convinced of something so far from the truth, because Joyce is Buffy’s mother and everything she is, says, and does will always have at least some small part of Buffy in it but…  
  
Stupidly, foolishly, she lets him kiss her again, lets him untie her shirt, slide his hands under her sequined tank top… She gasps as his hands find her breasts and grope them, wonders at the way his rough handling excites her.  
  
Joyce is lost and she can’t believe that last night she thought this road would lead somewhere.  
  
Angel’s got her jeans undone and down and suddenly she’s hoisted up on the counter and… oh god, is he…? Because no one’s done this to her in… well, since before she married Hank and she’s not sure and…  
  
There’s that smirk again. “You wanted to know how vampires eat.” And the brogue.  
  
Before she can protest, she’s flat on her back and his head is between her legs and yes, he clearly knows what he’s doing and it _seems_ like it’s all about pleasing _her_ but somehow… No, it’s really not, because she’s self-conscious and uncomfortable and he doesn’t seem to care at all.  
  
But as it goes on, it gets better, and Joyce lets herself forget that she never actually said yes as she finally manages to lose herself in sensation.  
  
She doesn’t think about the fact that she can _feel_ him smirk when her fingers wind their way into his hair. Her eyes stay closed and soon enough, she screams.  
  
It’s a wordless cry that sounds nothing like his name.  
  
  
To be continued…


	21. Chapter 21

Answering Prayers (Chapter Twenty-One)  
  
  
  
How they got here, Joyce can’t quite recall, but they’re in Angel’s room and she’s on the bed, Angel behind her – inside her – and the fact that she can’t see him is making her feel less in control than ever.  
  
It doesn’t change the fact that he’s damn good at this, though, which makes it worse for her in ways she’ll feel later, when the screaming goes silent and all that’s left are her thoughts.  
  
Not now, though. Now she’s lost in the way he’s taking her, the way his hands are gripping her hips and she can feel each one of his fingers in her flesh and… one hand reaches up, brushes that place on her shoulder where his teeth left their signature last night.  
  
 _That_ sends a cold current running through her – ice and electricity and memory. She gasps and somehow, even though she can’t see it, she can _feel_ him smirk. Do vampires feed on power as well as blood?  
  
The pace picks up and he’s driving into her hard and deep and it’s as much pain as pleasure, but somehow that takes her even higher and…   
  
Once again, she screams – that high, animal sound which comes from somewhere she never knew was part of her.   
  
Collapsed on the bed, she feels Angel’s weight on top of her – not crushing her, but it’s still possessive… oppressive, and it hardly matters that he’s not inside her now.  
  
He’ll always be inside her, from now until the end of her existence. That end which will come for her long before it ever will come for him, if it ever does. “Do you ever get bored?” she asks. “Tired of it?”  
  
“Of what?” He kisses her neck as he answers.  
  
“Life. I mean, there have to be moments where…”  
  
She doesn’t get to finish. He flips her over, no longer on top of her, but beside her… over her… eyes locked on hers. She doesn’t feel a bit more powerful now that she can see him. He’s staring into her eyes as if he can wrest all her secrets from her by sheer force of will.  
  
It’s possible that he could.  
  
“You don’t fancy eternity then?” There’s that brogue, but she blinks and sees… not him, but a beautiful blonde, the same one she saw last night but she looks even more familiar now.   
  
It doesn’t last long and then he’s there – more demonic than ever with his hard, gold-flecked eyes – and it takes effort and courage to shake her head. “No.”  
  
“What if I could take you to Fook Island?”  
  
Bastard! She wishes she’d never said a word to him.   
  
_So cold, so icy that one burns one's fingers on him! Every hand is startled when touching him.— And for that very reason some think he glows._   
  
Where did that come from? She knows she read it in a book years ago but she can't remember who said it; it’s truth, though, and that’s what’s important, and this time her “No” is more emphatic than before.  
  
Those eyes go soft and he strokes her cheek. “You… How can anyone be so naïve and so wise at the same time?”  
  
How on Earth is she supposed to answer that? So she doesn’t; just looks away, staring at the bed posts and admiring the intricate carving. This is no reproduction; this is an antique four poster costing many thousands of dollars. She’s about to ask him about vampire finances when another question comes out instead. “Who was she?”  
  
His hand under her chin guides her to face him once more. He doesn’t ask who she means. “Darla. She was my sire.”  
  
“In the alley. In Ireland.” What Joyce saw… it was Angel being born. This wasn’t just another in a long line of pretty, blonde conquests  
  
All of a moment, Joyce realizes… “She was in my house.” _That’s_ why her face was familiar. “What happened to her?”  
  
“I killed her. She was going to kill Buffy.”   
  
If Joyce hadn’t been looking into his eyes when he said it, she’d have felt incongruously happy – the man Buffy loved killing to protect her – but she _is_ looking into those eyes and what she sees…  
  
Damn him! Why? Because she’s all too well aware that she knows because he _wants_ her to know – to know that saving Buffy was a pretext, and that maybe even _he_ believed it then, but now… Now he’s honest enough to admit that Darla was the one being in all the world who could claim power over him and that was not allowed, especially not from someone who was weaker than him.  
  
It occurs to her that Darla must have loved him, just as Buffy does, and she doesn’t understand it at all.   
  
She says nothing, though, just looks away again, and he lets her. He’s still in the catbird seat and he knows it. “Did you go to the gallery today?”  
  
“No. I meant to, but I slept too long.” God, she’s just knows he’s smirking again and for once she wishes he’d pretend he was the man Buffy adored – still does, even now, wherever she is. As her eyes find him again, she thinks that that man was nothing like this one. Buffy would never put up with any of this. All the same, she blurts out something personal. “My staff probably thinks I was drunk or something. I know they wonder about my absences and things.”  
  
“They should show you some respect.” His eyes are hard as marble and she’s almost afraid for them.  
  
“They’re kids – college students and recent grads. They don’t… They don’t mean anything by it.” She knows she’s worried for nothing – Angel has his soul, of that she’s sure – but she still makes a mute plea with wide eyes. Don’t punish them for being callow, modern youth.  
  
His answer is a kiss, soft and gentle and nothing like the ones they shared before… having sex? Screwing? Fucking? (God, she hates that word, but it just might fit, so…) Nothing they’ve done could remotely be called making love. That’s enough of a relief to make fucking a word she might even come to cherish.  
  
“You’re like no one I’ve ever known,” he says and she’s terrified because a second ago she was reassuring herself that this meant nothing and now…  
  
So she gives a short little laugh and stumbles badly into another revelation she shouldn’t have made. “Yeah. I hear you usually like them a lot younger than I am.”  
  
There are those hard eyes again, even icier as they sparkle with gold. “Who’s been saying things about me?”  
  
She’s going to have to say _something_.“There was a vampire at Willy’s. He figured out that I was… with you and he made an offhand remark about your taste changing, that’s all. But he said it respectfully.”   
  
To her surprise, Angel guffaws. Is it wrong of her to be relieved? To be glad that a vampire who has no soul whatsoever is safe from harm? But then Angel’s expression grows soft again and she isn’t relieved anymore at all. “I wish…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he gets up and goes to his closet.  
  
Okay. Clearly the pillow talk and post-coital cuddling is over. And yes, Joyce is actually glad of it. She looks around for her clothes, but the only thing on the bedroom floor is her tank top. Everything else is either on the stairs or back in the kitchen. Trying to ignore how uncomfortable she feels wandering around naked, she’s about to head off to retrieve the missing garments when Angel puts a hand on her arm. He’s now sporting an expensive-looking black silk shirt and a pair of dark grey cashmere slacks.   
  
What the well-dressed demon will wear.  
  
She feels more naked than ever. Maybe that’s the point.  
  
Maybe there’s no maybe about it.  
  
He looks her over – blatant and lascivious – but he makes no move to start another round. Instead, he says, “After you get dressed, I’d like to see your gallery.”  
  
One more way inside her.   
  
He’s starting another round after all.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	22. Chapter 22

Answering Prayers (Chapter Twenty-Two)  
  
  
  
“It’s not worthy of you,” Angel says, as his eyes move over the collection of works by local artists and artisans that decorate the walls and pedestals of Joyce’s gallery. His tone is supercilious and dismissive and now her back is up.  
  
“This is a new gallery and it takes time.” No, she doesn’t mention the part about money. And anyway, “Some of these artists are young. They’re maturing. You see this?” She points to a colourful yet stark rendering of a worker in a field. “It’s by a young man named Rafael Garcia. He’s only twenty, but you can already see what a powerful vision he has. When he’s thirty? You’ll find his work in the top L.A. galleries and this piece will be worth at least ten times what I’m asking for it.”  
  
Is that respect she sees in Angel’s eyes? Maybe, because he takes another look at the painting – and at its five hundred dollar price tag. “I’d like to buy it.”  
  
Well, here’s the opening for that discussion she didn’t initiate earlier. “You have money?”  
  
“Everyone needs money.” That’s not exactly an answer, but then again, she wasn’t really expecting total candor from him. Not now that he’s himself – the self Buffy never knew – again.  
  
Now, of course, she realizes what’s happening and she hates herself for the burst of pride which led her to draw attention to this painting. Rafael’s her favorite of all the artists here and this is his very best work. She hates the thought of letting it go. Still, she takes it down from the wall – carefully, gingerly, as if it’s made of something fragile and fine. Which it is, she thinks, remembering what Rafael has told her about his family.   
  
She turns back to Angel. “Can I trust you?”  
  
There’s that damn smirk again. “You’ll get your money.” Which both answers her question and doesn’t… except that, no, actually, it does. Completely and totally.  
  
He draws near, still smirking, and she knows what he wants – what he _expects_.   
  
Before she can even think about the wisdom of what she’s doing, she extends her arm, puts her hand against his chest, and shakes her head. “This is my business.” Eyes locked on his and she won’t be bullied or coerced, not unless that soul of his is so much air and vapour.  
  
The smirk deepens and he tilts his head at her in that almost-salute she recalls from once before. “I won’t argue with a lady.” The expression is mocking, but the way the word lady sounds as it rolls over his tongue isn’t and she’s left thinking yet again that she’ll never understand him…  
  
… And that that knowledge leaves her miles ahead of where her child ever was.  
  
A vampire with a soul isn’t any more of a man than Oliver is and she remembers with a shudder the presence of Spike in her house and how foolishly comfortable she was with him.   
  
God. How did she ever survive her own stupidity?  
  
Shaking her head and not caring that Angel is confused, she gets the painting and says, “We should go.”  
  
He follows her back out to her car and watches as she carefully puts the painting in the back seat. “It’s precious to you,” he notes and while he’s not smirking it’s easy to see that he’s pleased with himself. One more way he’ll always be a part of her and he knows it – well.  
  
What on Earth did she think that she’d find, becoming involved with him… having sex with him?   
  
Then she gets in the car and sees her face in the rearview mirror and she thinks maybe she knows.   
  
Of course the big question is whether anything she’s gained is worth what she’s paid for it.  
  
What she’ll keep on paying for it.  
  
Angel is sitting in the passenger seat, as silent as she is as they drive back to the mansion. Once he reaches over and places his hand over hers; the contact doesn’t last, but it’s jarring. A reminder, as if she needed one, that this is nowhere near as casual as it should be.  
  
Here they are. The trip felt longer this time. She notices the passage of seconds more now, and the way minutes are never the same length. Will it stay this way after Buffy comes home? Or will she always be who she is now and this be the way the world is forever?  
  
She knows the answer though she lies to herself and leaves the question open and waiting for roses.  
  
They get out of the car and he moves to get the painting, but she stares him down – probably the way a Chihuahua stares down a Pit Bull – and he graciously allows her to hold onto it for awhile longer. She absorbs the colour and the meaning through her skin as she carries it into the cold, lonely place where it will be forever entombed. Is it too late to change her mind?  
  
She watches as his brow furrows for a moment – remembering – and then he goes to the massive fireplace, removing a stone and getting a small, carved box from behind it. That is quite a large roll of bills he’s removing from it and the five hundreds he peels off of it don’t make it at all smaller. Yes, clearly he has money. Did he rob his victims for it when he didn’t have a soul?  
  
Silly question, Joyce. Of course he did. Is it strange that her first response is a mental shrug and the observation that they had no more use for money anyway? That could be because she doesn’t want to think about all the blood staining hands that have held her, caressed her… and her daughter.  
  
Oh god. Does she have to think about that now?   
  
Angel hands her the money and takes the painting, beckoning her to follow him upstairs. They stop at a bedroom she’s only seen once before – when she was searching the house for her child. There’s a framed engraving of… London, she thinks, though long, long ago, hanging on the wall and she watches as he takes it down and hangs the painting up in its stead. “Buffy never comes into this room,” he explains and she realizes he’s been thinking of her too – and of her eventual return as a certainty.  
  
That has to mean something.  
  
Eyes – there are eyes glowing white in the dim light and it takes Joyce a moment to realize they belong to dolls. So many dolls. How she knows this, she can’t say, but she immediately observes, “This was Drusilla’s room. The one who killed Kendra.”  
  
It takes him a moment, memory springing back to life, but he nods. “The other Slayer. Yes, Dru killed her.” He says the name with a sad, strange familiarity and Joyce knows that pieces of the story are lurking in her brain along with everything else she saw through a veil of dust and copper. She doesn’t want to think about them, not now. There’ll be time – or maybe not. Everything feels panicked and immediate.  
  
There are questions… so many she _should_ ask, but she asks a selfish and personal one instead. “What did you see?”  
  
His answer is a shake of the head and one word. “Lies.” He takes her hand, and she tries not to think about the deeds done by his. “Let me tell you who you are.”  
  
She knows exactly what he means and that it will happen here – now. She should say no. She should run. This can’t happen.   
  
Joyce unbuttons her shirt and lets Angel push it down her shoulders.  
  
It won’t be sex this time.   
  
They’re about to make love.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	23. Chapter 23

Answering Prayers (Chapter Twenty-Three)  
  
  
  
Joyce is nude from the waist up and Angel is staring. “You’re so beautiful.” He’s said it before, but this time the sincerity of it… she can barely breathe. Not even when she was young and firm and unmarred by pregnancy and sunburn and life has anyone ever looked at her the way he’s looking at her now. How can he… Must be the dim light, huh? She should do her bedroom up this way, maybe then… “I see you, you know,” and it jars her, the way he somehow knows exactly what she’s thinking.  
  
Then he leans in and kisses her. It’s nothing like the kisses they’ve shared before. It’s not as… but it is, isn’t it? Just as passionate, just as intense, but there’s something… is it something darker? Or is it just more deliberate? He’s controlled, more conscious, if that’s the right word. She feels as if he’s taking it all in, trying to keep every sensation locked tight within him.  
  
It’s almost terrifying, the way he’s consuming this… consuming _her_. “Angel,” she breathes as his lips move to her neck and she can feel him smile against her throat. It hits her with the force of a punch to the stomach that she’s never said his name, not when they’re together… like _this_.  
  
Oh god.   
  
This is dangerous. Not in the way that it was with Buffy. Not that Angel will be perfectly happy. Neither of them will – and that’s the danger. If she does this…  
  
… Joyce will never be perfectly happy again. There will never be a moment free of the knowledge that she’s shared something with her daughter’s first true love that her little girl never did and never will. She already knows him better in one sense but now… Oh god. She can’t do this. She must _not_ do this.  
  
It’s too late for second thoughts, though, isn’t it?  
  
She’s staying, because despite the cost, she’s not the only one who knows… He knows _her_ like no one ever has, or ever will, and because of him that ‘Joyce’ who’ll soon be hidden away inside her forevermore will be alive somewhere. Even if she won’t be experiencing it.  
  
Her lips find his again and she feels like she’s consuming him as surely as he’s consuming her. It’s a heady, glorious, terrible feeling.  
  
She wonders for a moment if he wants her to reciprocate what he did for… well _to_ her in the kitchen, but no, maybe not, because before she knows it, her jeans are off - sliding down her legs easier each time, she’ll observe later with acid, bitter amusement – and she’s on the bed, with him, his mouth moving over her, still consuming, memorizing, in that terrifying, inhuman way of his.  
  
No, he doesn’t want her to reciprocate; he wants to maintain control, power, superiority. She’ll never forget what he is.  
  
It doesn’t matter, though, does it?  
  
What’s happening isn’t so different from what they’ve done before and she wonders for a moment why she thought…  
  
What’s happening is completely different from what they’ve done before and she wishes she understood exactly how and why.  
  
Her body is singing even as she feels some unaccountable urge to weep – his mouth, his hands, her own joining his in exploration, desperate and needy, and then…  
  
He’s inside her again. For the first time she feels the coolness – not cold, he isn’t that, but not… human.  
  
Is she?  
  
Two days in the world of demons and she no longer hears the sound of her own heartbeat, has already begun thinking of the rest of Sunnydale’s residents as ‘them’. Now, with a demon inside her, she feels both more alive than she ever has and less human than she thought possible.   
  
A part of her longs to hang onto this sensation forever, this sense of being something different, something unique and extraordinary.   
  
He’s taking her with a contradictory deliberate fierceness. “Where are you?” It’s a demand and she’s shaking with something besides desire.  
  
“I’m here. With you.”  
  
That she is, and more so than before as he redoubles his efforts to dominate her, to keep her where he wants her to be – with him, all of him.  
  
She’s there, still hearing the echo of horses hooves and heels on cobblestones, still tasting copper and ash when air touches her tongue, still feeling the lick of flames grasping for flesh… and knowing in her bones the torment of a soul that both hates the presence of a demon beside it and misses the freedom of letting go and giving in to that demon’s dark temptations  
  
Her hand moves to his chest, to where there should be a heartbeat, and somehow, in the silence which is there instead, she finds… something. Some truth whose meat she’ll consume later, when it’s all she has on which to feast. He’s not _in_ human, she realizes, but that doesn’t make him a man.  
  
The pace and force of his movements reaches a crescendo and she cries out, “Angel!” The second time she’s said his name in his bed.  
  
The last time she’ll _ever_ say it in his bed.  
  
It’s then that the tears which have threatened finally break free.   
  
She’s a hurricane of confused and incomprehensible emotions and she doesn’t understand how or why this has happened, but here she is – changed forever by what amounts to a few hours – and she already feels the loss and the ache and the loneliness and she misses the body still within hers and…  
  
Hers are not the only tears, are they? No, because Angel’s face is against her neck and though he’s not crying with the same energy that she is, she still feels salt damp on her skin and the coolness of his release inside her body as he withdraws to lie beside her and pull her close.  
  
They stay like this, silent, for what feels like a long time but is surely only moments. “Do you still have that sketch?” she asks. “The one you did of me?”  
  
He nods and his eyes are a world of questions. “May I have it?”  
  
The flash of gold answers her before his tongue and far more frighteningly. “No.”  
  
“But…”  
  
“It’s mine.”   
  
He says ‘it’, but she doesn’t think that’s what he means at all. Maybe that’s just her ego, though. It would have to be, right?  
  
“What if…?”  
  
“No one will see it.”   
  
The lines of his mouth go hard and cruel and the subject is closed. Still, it feels like there’s something he wants to say and she… she doesn’t know what it is, but she knows she doesn’t want to hear it.  
  
She needs to be gone. This needs to be over, the way it should have been over before it began.  
  
With a suddenness that surprises her, she’s off the bed and gathering her clothes from the floor. No time to dress though before he’s gathered his wits and in seconds she feels a too-strong grip on her wrist. “Don’t leave.” It’s an order and a plea and she’s scared of him, but somehow…  
  
“I have to go.” That too is a plea, but he’s not paying attention. Instead, he pulls her too him, kissing her for all he’s worth.  
  
If that had been all… if it were only all.  
  
“I love you.”  
  
No. No, no, no, no. She can’t hear those words. Not from him. Not because she doesn’t love him back, though she doesn’t. And not because she hates herself for taking something from her child, though she’ll hate herself every day for the rest of her life.   
  
It’s because he knows her, knows her in a way no one else ever will, and those words will never mean anything from any other man, no, never again.  
  
All his fault. Every bit of the pain that’s going to consume her like acid every day for the rest of her life.  
  
No, it’s all her fault, but she still hates him, with a high, keening fury that makes her heedless of danger, heedless enough…  
  
… To slap him hard across that handsome, hideous face. “You bastard!”  
  
Maybe she shocked him. Who knows? But he lets go and, clothes in hand, she races down the stairs. He doesn’t follow and she dresses in the living room faster than even the day when her mother… No, Joyce, no thoughts of motherhood and teenage indiscretions now. Please god, not now. Still shaking with rage and despair and not caring how disheveled she must be, she hurries out the door and to her car before Angel can change his mind and pursue her.  
  
It’s over. This, not this, and so many other things.  
  
A good thing that she knows the way home automatically; she can barely see the road through her tears.  
  
But when she gets there, her eyes do make out something. Two figures sitting on her porch, waiting.  
  
Oh god. Willow and Xander are here. What in the hell is she going to do?  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	24. Chapter 24

Answering Prayers (Chapter Twenty-Four)  
  
  
  
She watches Xander and Willow stand up as her car nears the house.  
  
Okay, Joyce. This won’t be a problem. Your hair only looks like you’ve just stepped out of a wind tunnel and the less said about your clothes the better. There’s no way that will arouse the suspicions of a couple of teenagers who just happen to fight alongside the Slayer…  
  
… or at least they used to. Who is keeping the town safe now?   
  
And why did it take her this long to even ask that question?  
  
At least there’s no one else’s car in her driveway this time, so she pulls in and parks. Deep breaths, Joyce. She takes two, then a third, before she gets out and approaches the two teens standing there looking grave and accusatory. “Hello there,” she offers with what’s probably a pathetic simulation of her old ‘Joyce’ smile, “What are you two doing out so late?”  
  
“We kind of wanted to ask you the same question. About two hours ago.” When did it become acceptable for teenage boys to speak like this to the mothers of their friends? Because it shouldn’t have, ever, and Joyce fixes Xander with her very best ‘Mom’ glare in response.  
  
“I didn’t think I was required to report my actions to you, Xander.” Adding the ‘Mom’ _voice_ intensifies the effect. It’s gratifying to see him shrink a bit. Maybe he’ll learn some respect from this.  
  
Willow quickly steps in to smooth things over. She may be a witch, but she really is still the girl Joyce thought she knew. It’s oddly comforting and lord knows she could use that right now. “He didn’t mean it that way. It’s just…” She looks around and Joyce gets it.  
  
“Why don’t you both come inside? It’s ridiculous standing out here and talking on the porch.”  
  
So they all walk into Joyce’s house. She turns on the lights – it’s so much darker in here than out there and oh is that a literal metaphor.  
  
“So, what is it you want to say to me?” She’s in her best ‘Mom’ stance, arms akimbo, her mouth set in a straight but slightly relaxed line, one eyebrow slightly raised. Funny how she notices every bit of it now – it’s a costume. Was it always, or is this new? Did Angel transform her without turning her?  
  
Willow fidgets, nibbling her lower lip, and Xander is looking at the floor.  
  
It’s disturbingly enjoyable to watch them squirm and Joyce hates herself for it. Let’s break this impasse. So she does. “You saw me at Willy’s and you want to know why I was there, right?”  
  
Sighs of relief in two part harmony and she fights back a very un-Mom-like giggle. Oh, Joyce. Who are you? Who _are_ you?  
  
“No. Really. I mean, it’s none of our business. It’s just that there was this rumour about Buffy and… okay, yeah, we kind of know you were at Willy’s and we’re sorta curious and…” Willow looks nothing like a powerful witch as she stands there, stammering out her combination explanation/apologia.  
  
Of course, then Xander blunders in. “Giles says you’ve been acting kind of strange.”  
  
This time Joyce can’t hold back and she rolls her eyes and humphs. Good god. That man, of all people, judging her and running off to tell tales… “I was looking for Buffy,” she says. “I don’t think I need Mr. Giles’s permission to search for my own daughter. Because maybe this Council he belongs to thinks that mothers don’t matter and that we have no right to any say in our children’s lives…” She’s angry now – again, always – and she stops speaking to get herself together, taking a deep breath before continuing. “Buffy’s my daughter and I’m her mother, so no, I am not waiting around for other people to tell me what’s happened to her or to find her and bring her home. I’m going out and doing that for myself. Because that’s what mothers do.”  
  
That last sentence was meant to be an expression of a commonplace – an undisputed truth – but it isn’t. She sees the sudden droop of heads and clouding of eyes and… oh god has she ever blundered.  
  
She’s a Mom now – at last – and she goes to Willow and Xander, pulling them into an embrace. “I’d look for you, both of you, just like I’m looking for Buffy.” That’s true, she realizes, and she’s so grateful that, as much as she’s changed, that core is still there, that a few tears escape and find their way into Willow’s hair. “I’d look for you,” she repeats, as two lost children cling tightly.  
  
A soft voice turned boyish and vulnerable whispers, “Thank you.” She knows he never meant for her to hear it so she says nothing, but she doesn’t let go.  
  
It’s a long, long few moments before they disentangle, Willow and Xander seeming almost ashamed of their need. Would she go to jail for slapping their parents full across the face? These are wonderful children and they deserve parents who appreciate and cherish them.   
  
No wonder they’re so loyal to Mr. Giles. He’s actually better than what they have at home. That’s tragic. She wishes like anything that she could break the silence and let them know she knows and that…  
  
But she won’t. She knows the dance and the denial and that torture wouldn’t get either of them to admit to her that home is anything but sweet.  
  
Her mother’s face flashes before her eyes and she fights back the pain. Oh yes, she knows the dance very well.  
  
She’d always said she’d do better, be the perfect Mom… Yeah, how’s that working out for you, Joycie?  
  
“Did you find out anything?” Willow asks, and she’s blessedly dragged back into the here and now.  
  
“Not yet, but I am making some contacts and I haven’t given up,” a slight shake of the head keeping the tears at bay as she speaks.   
  
Curiosity – it might be Willow’s besetting sin. “Who are your contacts?”  
  
If Willow only knew… “I need to keep that to myself, okay? They trust me because they don’t think I’m part of what you’re doing.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
The silence that ensues is more awkward than ever and then, “Well, we better go. Thanks for telling us… I mean…” Willow’s clearly _dying_ to ask why Joyce dislikes Giles and probably why she’s so disheveled, but she doesn’t, and she takes Xander’s arm and leads him to the door.  
  
The ‘Mom’ reemerges and Joyce asks, “Would you like a ride home?” It’s not actually a question and even as they insist they’re fine and brandish crosses and a stake, she’s hustling them to her car and all but shoving them in. Please god let her do something right tonight.  
  
No one talks as Joyce drives, which is good, because she’d never hear them over the voice in her head – Angel’s voice.  
  
 _“I love you.”_  
  
What a hypocrite she is, looking down on the Rosenbergs and the Harrises. She’s pretty sure that Sheila Rosenberg has never slept with Oz and that Tony Harris has never even met Cordelia.  
  
She wonders for the first time if maybe Buffy wouldn’t be better off finding herself a new family, a better family.   
  
_“I love you.”_  
  
The children get out at their respective houses and Joyce can almost hear the ‘thank you’ from each over the cacophony of self-hatred and Angel and soon enough she’s back at her house.  
  
The light is on in the front room.  
  
Joyce turned it off when she left. She _knows_ she turned it off. Divorcee frugality makes the flip-down of switches as automatic as breathing.  
  
Who is in her house?  
  
Mr. Giles? No, there’s no Citroen parked anywhere near here.  
  
Could it be Angel? No, no, he’d have left the light off.  
  
That voice again: _"I love you."_  
  
The unknown – it’s what you _know_ that holds the _real_ danger.  
  
Still, the unknown is no slouch in the potential harm department so Joyce is cautious and wary as she approaches her door, wishing she had a weapon even if she has no idea how to use one. She enters slowly, almost comically stealthy, and turns to see…  
  
“Oh my god!”  
  
A moment later, her arms are full of warm, soft, blonde…  
  
“Buffy!”  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	25. Chapter 25

Answering Prayers (Chapter Twenty-Five)  
  
  
  
“You’re home.”   
  
Yes, of course, Joyce is stating the obvious, the visually and tactilely obvious, but she can’t think of anything else to say. It’s real, isn’t it? And that’s almost impossible to wrap her mind around. The ache and emptiness in her heart have become such a constant that now that they aren’t there it almost feels as though something is missing.  
  
How much sense does that even make? Where is the logic?  
  
“You’re home,” she repeats, tears filling her eyes and emotion building, choking her voice. “You’re home.”  
  
Buffy’s arms are tight around her and Joyce notices warmth and damp soaking through chambray. Her girl, her little girl, is crying. Clinging to her Mommy and crying.  
  
Oh god, it’s too much. She clings even tighter, heedless of squeezing the breath from her child’s lungs. “I’m home” can be heard anyway and… it’s her baby’s voice, the voice Joyce has missed every day for over a month and…  
  
What should she say?   
  
There are stern and maternal dictates to lay down and admonitions and recriminations which should be made, but…   
  
“I know I’m supposed to be very angry with you and lecture you about responsibility,” she says, and she feels Buffy stiffen in her arms before she finishes with, “but I can’t say any of those things. I’m just so glad you’re home.” With that, her girl goes soft again and neither of them let go.  
  
It’s then that reality hits Joyce like a tidal wave, nearly drowning her.  
  
Angel.  
  
She’d almost forgotten him in the tumult and emotional chaos of Buffy’s return, but he’s there now, right there, filling her thoughts, and oh no – what is she going to do?   
  
Her eyes scan the room, as if the answers might be found in the dated magazines she hasn’t culled from the stack on the coffee table or under the dingy doilies on the arms of the sofa. Those need to go in the laundry and soon.  
  
There are no answers anywhere.  
  
Luckily, Buffy’s not the strong, silent type, so seconds later, Joyce has other topics to worry about.   
  
The embrace ends and Buffy steps back, taking in her Mom’s uncharacteristic appearance, but asking, “Where were you?”  
  
Okay. This is a safe one. Let’s hope all the questions are this easy and innocuous. “I was driving Willow and Xander home. It’s late and… well, I know they always carry holy water and stakes, but that doesn’t mean they should be walking home this time of night.”  
  
Wide eyes and a ‘who are you and what have you done with my Mom’ expression are her answer. All right, she probably deserves it, but Joyce is still a little stung. “What?” A head tilt and wider eyes are what she gets. Yes, she gets it. She was really horrible that last night, wasn’t she? But really, is this even reasonable? Buffy hasn’t considered for a minute that maybe her mother overreacted out of shock and fear and has become rational since then. Is that fair?   
  
No, not really.  
  
Which means that her daughter might be a Slayer, but she’s also an absolutely normal 17 year old girl.   
  
Joyce needs to be the one cutting the slack and exercising the reason, because, if she’s honest, she didn’t think any more highly of adults when she was her age. In fact, she might have been even _more_ judgmental.  
  
“I get that I took it pretty badly – your news. I didn’t handle it well and I didn’t do or say anything right.” She can almost _hear_ Buffy’s jaw hit the floor. “When I’m wrong, I admit it,” she says, and that might be a little bit of a challenge, too.  
  
It’s accepted. “I probably should have come back a lot sooner.” Her eyes go soft and far away. “You can’t run away from your problems… from pain.” She’s not talking about Joyce and that actually makes it worse. Buffy’s feelings for Angel are more immediate to her than missing her Mom and – dammit! It hurts and Joyce is actually jealous of that bastard, among all the other tangled horrible feelings she has towards him.  
  
Buffy goes off on a tangent before Joyce loses her composure and accidentally gives herself away. “What are you wearing?”  
  
“A shirt and jeans,” she responds, putting on a mildly defensive tone and being intentionally obtuse.  
  
“I’ve never seen you dress like this.” Arms akimbo, her little girl is adorable as the Grand Inquisitor.  
  
Joyce ‘gives in’. “All right. I… I’ve been going to Willy’s.”  
  
Again, there’s the sound of a jaw hitting hardwood. “You what to where?”  
  
Should she suggest a trip to the kitchen? Offer to make Buffy a late-night snack? But they do that too much, don’t they – both of them? Hedging and delaying and dancing around the edges of conversations and letting each other take refuge in inanity or silence.  
  
Stay the course, Joyce; keep going.  
  
“Did you really think I was just going to sit at home and wait? Did you think I wasn’t going to try and find you?”  
  
Dear god. If the expression on Buffy’s face is any indication, that is _exactly_ what she thought and Joyce bursts into tears again. “You’re my daughter. My _daughter_. And I’m your mother. That means that no matter what happens between us, I always love you, I always care about you, and wherever you go, I will always go after you.”  
  
They’re wrapped in each other’s arms again, both in tears, but not for as long. Joyce can _feel_ the questions vibrating under her girl’s skin. “How did you know about…”  
  
“Willy’s?” She nods; it’s an understandable question. She tells the story in her best ‘Mom’ manner. “I talked to Willow. I wanted to understand… to know about this… Slayer thing – about who you are and what you do. So I sat her down in the kitchen and plied her with cocoa and cookies until she spilled her guts.” Just to put the icing on the confection, she adds, “Oh, not literally, by the way,” and Buffy giggles, even as she looks slightly stern and bewildered all at once.  
  
She’s taking it all in, isn’t she?   
  
There’s something so much like the feeling when Buffy first kicked her from the inside, letting her know that something alive and powerful was growing within her.  
  
It’s like watching her grow up by inches right here, right now.  
  
But as much as she wants to stay in the moment, to be silent and just _be_ , instinct compels Joyce to say something. “Willow told me – about what you had to do. About Angel.” The best place to hide is inside the truth, now isn’t it?  
  
The dam breaks and this time only Buffy is crying and Joyce pulls her close, trying her best to soothe her child, even as she knows as surely as anything that what brought Buffy back was… “I had a dream. Twice. He was here. He wasn’t in Hell. So I had to come back… I had to see. I went to his house and…” Fresh tears… “He sent me away. He says he understands and that he doesn’t hate me, but… he sent me away.”  
  
God how Joyce hates him! How could he do this?  
  
So angry is she that she can even bear the gut punch that is the fact that Buffy came home for someone who wasn’t her. Not like she doesn’t deserve punishment anyway, is it?   
  
Look what she’s done.   
  
This is all her fault, isn’t it?  
  
All kinds of options run through her mind…   
  
…and none of them are worth taking.  
  
The truth is that Angel, for all that he’s breaking Buffy’s heart, is doing the right thing, isn’t he? There’s no future for him and Buffy and there wouldn’t have been if Joyce had never become involved in any way.   
  
Maybe none of this has anything to do with her after all.  
  
So she says nothing, well nothing but the usual ‘there, there’s’ and ‘it will be okays’ that amount to nonsense sounds at times like this, and she waits for the storm to subside. “Why don’t you go and wash your face, sweetheart? I think there’s some people we ought to go see.”  
  
All right, maybe it's not the brightest and most dazzling of Buffy-smiles, but it’s genuine and Joyce’s eyes never leave Buffy’s figure making its loud but graceful way up the stairs – almost-but-not-quite the way things used to be. There’s the sound of the plumbing in Buffy’s bathroom and all the little noises she’s missed because there’s only been silence in Buffy's part of the house for what seems like forever.  
  
Whatever it costs to have this, to _keep_ this… Joyce will pay it.  
  
In a few moments Buffy’s back, fresh-faced and striving for normal, and they’re out the door and on their way. Yes, she’s even going to take her to see Mr. Giles. After all, she's sure Buffy wants to see him as well as her friends and... well, if she sees them all tonight, it will be that much easier for Joyce to keep her daughter to herself tomorrow.   
  
That's the way it should be.  
  
Because she’s Buffy’s mother again.  
  
It’s not perfect happiness, but it’s happiness all the same.  
  
She holds her daughter’s hand as she drives… and she smiles.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	26. Chapter 26

Answering Prayers (Chapter Twenty-Six)  
  
  
  
It’s been a week. A week of loud music and the drumbeat of footsteps up and down the staircase and of teenage laughter… and tears. A week of sleepovers and movie rentals and a sit-down or two with Mr. Giles and lots of eye-rolling from Buffy, but life seems to be settling down into normal.  
  
The new normal.  
  
A week – and last night she finally saw her for the first time: The Slayer.  
  
It was like nothing she’d imagined… and it was everything like Buffy.  
  
Why had she thought that they must be two different creatures, the Slayer and the daughter she knew?  
  
She’d had this idea in her head that a Slayer must be a serious, silent creature, that’s why, and that’s not Buffy. But what do you know? It’s not this Slayer either. No, _this_ Slayer trades wisecracks with her foes and frets about stains from demon guts on her new miniskirt and handles a stake in the breezy, self-confident way that she handles her life.  
  
That she _used_ to handle her life.  
  
There’s a slight slump of shoulder that was never there before and a line at the corner of each eye and Joyce feels every bit of it, as if she were the weight bowing Buffy’s back and carving pain into the smoothness of her face.  
  
Is she? Or was she right and is this inevitable? Would her little girl’s heart have been shattered to pieces no matter what?  
  
Would Buffy feel worse if Angel were still in Hell? Or would it just be different?  
  
Joyce thinks the answer is… How in heaven’s name can she even know? Because the dream of Angel might have brought Buffy home, but her daughter didn’t know… didn’t know that Angel would send her away.  
  
What had Joyce thought would happen that day? When she first saw that pale body lying on stone?  
  
Sitting at the dining room table, surrounded by papers as she goes over her expenses, Joyce ponders prayer and God and all the huge intangibles that have everything to do with faith and nothing to do with knowledge and she’s just… lost.  
  
As are the canceled checks for… dammit! There is no way she can get the rest of the gallery’s accounts reconciled without those checks. She brought them home with her, or at least she thought she… Shoot! She left them on the desk, didn’t she?  
  
It’s 10 PM and Joyce is in her comfy house clothes and slippers, but this can’t be helped. Besides, no one will be at the gallery tonight, so it doesn’t matter what she looks like anyway. She grabs her purse and leaves a note for Buffy by the answering machine and another by the fridge before she heads out.  
  
There’s a cross and holy water in her purse these days and a stake in the car under the driver’s seat.  
  
For some reason, she detours slightly – or maybe not so slightly – on her way and passes Willy’s bar. Funny thing, but she misses it, misses how she felt there – like she was important, mysterious, in control… like she wasn’t the comforting shadow on the fringes of real life anymore.  
  
Is Oliver in there tonight? Does anyone still talk about her? Not that she wants them to because then the details of her visits might get back to Buffy and the matter of all that blood is something she’d rather not have to try and explain, but…  
  
Okay, so despite the dangers, she deep down hopes that she’s remembered there, even spoken of from time to time.  
  
As much as she loves being Buffy’s Mom – and she does, oh how she does – this is so much harder than she ever thought it would be, this pulling down of blinds and settling herself in corners. She’s no Edna Pontelier, but a part of her does see… Of course, the key difference is that she _would_ sacrifice herself.  
  
Isn’t that what she’s doing, after all?  
  
Here she is. The gallery. Hand in her purse as she gets out, scanning the darkness, hoping her senses are sharp enough… and knowing they aren’t. Not nearly sharp enough.  
  
Still, she’s lucky and there’s nothing between her and the back door and she gets in just fine, disabling the alarm and turning on a light as she heads for her office.  
  
Her dark office.  
  
“You’re here.”  
  
She hits the switch by the door, though she doesn’t have to – not like she doesn’t know who’s in here with her.  
  
“Angel.” Anger, fear – which one is in control?  
  
His voice. She never thought she’d hear it again. “I wasn’t expecting you.” Her head is starting to spin because he’s acting as if she’s just barged into _his_ property.  
  
“This is _my_ gallery,” she says, back straightening, the Chihuahua facing down that Pit Bull one more time, “I can be here whenever I want.” Time to turn the tables. Arms akimbo, hipshot – the way Buffy stood scant days ago… no don’t think about that – she glares at him. “I’d like to know what _you’re_ doing here.” Also, why the hell didn’t the alarm go off? She pays a lot of money for that alarm system.  
  
He hears the questions she didn’t ask out loud. “I’ve learned a few tricks in my time.” There’s that damn smirk again, and his hand is on her desk, caressing it; she feels it on her own skin.  
  
Of course, he reveals none of the details of his successful breaking and entering – she didn’t expect him to – but now another question occurs to her and she can’t stop herself. “Is this… the first time.”  
  
He shakes his head and she shivers, feeling violated. Every morning, she’s come here and... He’s been in her space without her permission and no, it’s not rape, but it’s not okay, either. “You need to stop this. I don’t want you in my gallery.” She says ‘gallery’ but she means so much more and he knows it.  
  
“I’ve been in every part of you.” She hates him for saying it, but he’s right. Unaccountably, what she really hates is that he’s not smirking.  
  
“It’s over.”  
  
Looking away from her, he says, “I know,” but what _she_ knows is that he’s lying.  
  
She can’t look at him. Instead she looks at the boxes lying against the wall. Has he looked inside? Seen the new art she’s going to be hanging on the walls. There’s a new painting by Rafael in one of them. Please, please let him not have…  
  
“Rafael Garcia’s improving. The children in the field? You’re right, you know. He’s going places.”  
  
Is there nothing this man will leave her?  
  
“She comes to the mansion,” he says and she’s chilled. Buffy hasn’t said a word about… “I know how to stay hidden. I meant what I told her.” If Joyce knew all of it, she might feel… better? Relieved? But Buffy keeps her own counsel too damn well and Joyce knows she heard barely a fraction of what passed between them.  
  
“You’re doing the right thing. After what happened…” She means the loss of Angel’s soul and the fact that it could never be safe with Buffy now, and she knows he knows it, but he insists on twisting her words.  
  
“I’d never do that to you.”  
  
She rolls her eyes and looks up to the ceiling. “Why are you being like this? Why are you making everything so hard?” It wasn’t supposed to be. She knows that. She knows – now, all at once – exactly what she was looking for and what she was supposed to be and dammit why couldn’t he just follow the script?  
  
“I love you.”  
  
The cold fury she felt the first time he said it is even more intense now, and she’s about to slap him harder than before, but this time he grabs her hand before it can reach its target. “The first one’s free. The second? That costs.”  
  
In a split second, her eyes too fixed on gold and ridges to make sense of anything, she’s back in his arms.  
  
This time it’s truly a demon who’s kissing her.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	27. Chapter 27

Answering Prayers (Chapter Twenty-Seven)  
  
  
  
Ridges, fangs, force, anger, need, violence churning underneath the skin.  
  
For the first time, Joyce is truly terrified of Angel.   
  
There is that cross and holy water in her purse… but her purse is on the floor and she can’t get to it and even if she could, she’s got nothing like Buffy’s dexterity and Angel’s not some fledgling. Yes, she knows the lingo now, not that it matters nearly as much as what she  _doesn’t_  know.  
  
Just then …   
  
“Mom?”  
  
Dear God. It’s Buffy.  
  
Please don’t let her daughter come in and see… she’d suffer anything to keep her daughter from the agony of finding out…  
  
“Mom?” This time the call is more concerned and plaintive. Angel’s mouth leaves hers and his face begins the shift back to that false humanity that fools her daughter too completely.  
  
That fooled  _her_  too completely.  
  
He lets go of her and seems to melt into the darkest corner of the room. She’d ask how he does it if she were the Joyce she was two weeks or so ago. She doesn’t need to now. “I’m in the office, honey. I’ll be right out.” It occurs to her to be grateful that she isn’t wearing lipstick. She’d never be able to explain smeared makeup to her eagle-eyed girl.  
  
With a glance to the shadows where he seems willing to stay (for now), she walks out of the office and into the better lit gallery. The space where Rafael’s painting once hung is now occupied by Lia Ray’s clumsy but topical mixed media piece about feminism and sports; it still feels empty and painful to Joyce. “Aren’t you supposed to be patrolling?” she asks, trying to sound bright and casual.  
  
“I saw your car here and wondered what was going on.”  
  
Smiling indulgently, trying to keep all thoughts of the other occupant of the gallery out of her mind lest her daughter notice a ‘something’ behind her eyes… “Just finishing up some boring accounting stuff. It’ll only take me a little while longer, then I’ll be home.”  
  
Arms akimbo and a worried look on her face, Buffy counters, “It’s late.” Joyce wants to laugh at the incongruity of her teenage daughter admonishing her for being out at night.  
  
“I have a cross and holy water in my purse.” Not that they’ve done her any service against the vampire from whom she’s in the most danger, but she’s at least distracted by the stunned look on Buffy’s face. She adds with a stage whisper, “Don’t let it get around, but I know the Slayer pretty well.”  
  
Buffy hugs her and for a few seconds all is right with the world. “I’m glad you’re being careful.” Why does it always feel as if there’s more her little girl wants to say? Maybe it’s that she herself is holding so much back, keeping so many secrets. If only she hadn’t passed that trait on to her child.   
  
“Go finish your patrol,” she says, even as part of her wants to tell Buffy to go wait in the car while she grabs her purse and makes a hasty escape. There are accounts to settle, though, aren’t there, and the most pressing have nothing to do with money, so she keeps that airy smile plastered on her face as she accompanies her daughter to the door. Impulsively, she hugs her again. “You be careful, too, okay?”  
  
Holding up her stake, Buffy breezily assents and then… she’s gone.   
  
God. Joyce should have said, “I love you,” shouldn’t she? Why didn’t she? Why is it that she either says the wrong thing or doesn’t say the things she should? Why is everything always so hard?  
  
There’s that damn vision of her mother’s face again and she knows too well why.   
  
All those promises she made to herself to be everything that woman never was and look what it’s come to in the end.  
  
A heavy sigh and a heavier spirit and she trudges back to the office. He’s sitting on her desk… her purse is right behind him. Damn it! He listened to every word.  
  
“So…” she begins, hating herself enough to put herself in immediate danger, “I’m guessing you didn’t stick around to apologize.”  
  
She’s starting to really hate that damn smirk of his. “No.” Getting up, he takes a step toward her and she backs away – probably a mistake, she thinks. He’s a predator, and predators love to give chase.  
  
“I’m not going to hurt you.”   
  
It occurs to her that the fact that he says it means he considered the option. “Should I be grateful?”  
  
“You’re angry.” He seems surprised. What is it about men that makes them so obtuse?   
  
Or maybe he’s right. Maybe she doesn’t make any sense at all. Because, come to think of it, nothing she’s done since the moment a naked vampire appeared before her at the mansion has been sensible in any way.   
  
What does she even feel? She could have gone to her car and gotten her stake – ended this once and for all, but it never even occurred to her.  
  
Out of the blue, she thinks of Oliver and wonders what Buffy would say if she knew he considered Joyce a step up in class… and that for a brief, terrible moment Joyce was flattered by that.  
  
“I don’t know what I am.” And in that moment, Joyce is more honest than she’s ever been. Angel closes the gap, and this time she doesn’t move. This is inevitable, isn’t it? This… whatever it is. She’s a chess piece on some cosmic board and no matter where she tries to go, she always ends up in the middle of the game.  
  
His hand is under her chin now and she thinks he’s going to say something – but he doesn’t – or that he’s going to kiss her – but he doesn’t do that either. He simply stands there, eyes locked on hers, and she has no choice but to stare into those dark, gold-tinged depths.  
  
She sees pain and anger… and hunger. She sees Darla and Drusilla and Spike. She sees corpses and candlelight and laughter and agony.   
  
She sees herself.  
  
She doesn’t see Buffy at all.  
  
What has she done?  
  
After what feels like hours, there are soft words, barely audible. “I love you.”  
  
“I know.” Which she does. Then she adds, “I… you know me,” and it’s not the same thing at all, or maybe it is and she just doesn’t understand, but either way… “This is over. It has to be over.” A few errant tears spill briefly from her eyes and he wipes one carefully away with his finger… and then brings that same finger to his lips. There’s a shocking intimacy to the gesture and she can feel it down to her bones.  
  
Reaching up, she touches his cheek – smooth, cool, dry. It’s like soft marble, if that’s possible, and she tries to store the sensation in her memory, as if she anticipated what he says next.  
  
“I’m leaving. Sunnydale… it’s too hard. Being here. Seeing you…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but she’s not all that shocked at the implication that he’s been watching her.  
  
She nods. “It’s for the best.” But of course she has to ask, “What about Buffy?”  
  
“I’ll leave a note. She’ll get over it. She’s young.” The words are careless and unemotional and she wants to slap him except that it doesn’t really matter, does it? Anyway, it’s probably for the best that he won’t cling – won’t come back.  
  
“She’s lucky.” What does Joyce even mean by that?  
  
He leans in before she notices and kisses her. It’s as passionate a kiss as they’ve ever shared, but there’s… it’s cruel, she thinks, though she doesn’t know why until it’s over and he speaks.  
  
“You’ll suffer as much as I do.”  
  
Then he’s gone.  
  
Joyce sits down at the desk and waits for the sobs to start. She waits and she waits, but the flood of tears doesn’t come.   
  
So she gathers up the checks and heads for home.  
  
  
  
To be continued…


	28. Chapter 28

Answering Prayers (Chapter Twenty-Eight)  
  
  
  
“He left. He just… left.”   
  
Buffy says those words, or variations of those words, every day. Has said them since the night she came home, shaking and sobbing, waking Joyce from troubled dreams, transformed from Slayer into heartbroken girl tumbling into Mommy’s arms.  
  
The night after Joyce last saw Angel.  
  
He meant it.  
  
He’s gone.  
  
It’s been a week and he’s gone. Even if Buffy wasn’t still fragile and moody, she’d somehow know; Joyce is sure of it. The part of her that is Buffy’s Mom wishes that weren’t true. But part of her… if Joyce is going to be honest with herself, then she has to admit that she holds tight to that singularity, to the fact that she knows Angel in a way no one ever has.  
  
The hardest thing to deal with is the fact that the reverse is true as well.  
  
Every morning she looks in the mirror and there are two faces looking back at her: Buffy’s Mom and a woman she barely knows – the woman she might have been.  
  
If she had the choice, would she give up the first to claim the latter?  
  
But then she looks at Buffy and she knows. No, she could never give up her child – loving her, raising her, watching her  _become_ … hoping she never has to make the choices Joyce did.  
  
She wants her baby to have it all, the whole world and everything in it.  
  
Someday, she’s sure, Buffy will meet someone – the right someone – and she’ll realize that Angel did her a favour by leaving, and Joyce will be able to shed some of the horrible burden of guilt that grows heavier with every tear Buffy cries. That someday won’t be soon, or soon enough, but it will come and then maybe Joyce can forgive…   
  
Not herself, never herself, but Angel – maybe she will forgive Angel.  
  
Yes, a week has passed and she knows Buffy is at Willow’s and they are doing some sort of girlish bonding that is absolutely guaranteed not to involve going to the mansion – bless Willow for her meticulous planning of even the most spontaneous of teenage occasions – so it’s Joyce’s turn.  
  
She goes back – back to the scene of the crime.  
  
It’s colder than she remembers (isn’t everything?) and it feels more cavernous and forbidding, though it was never cozy. To a casual visitor, it would look as if the occupants of the place simply vanished. Joyce knows better. She knows what isn’t there.   
  
There’s a throw missing, the one she first gave Angel to cover himself.  
  
At that moment she’d thought he was a child afraid of the dark. If she’d known that he  _was_  the dark, what would she have done? Does she wish things had been different? And with all the pain she’s in, why is that such a difficult question?  
  
Shaking her head, she keeps exploring, noticing the small things, like the way that brick sits ever so slightly wrong in the fireplace façade. She doesn’t have to check; she knows the space behind it is empty. How much money had been hidden there in the first place? Was it all Angel had?  
  
There’s a vase missing, too; she’d paid it some slight attention. Delicate porcelain. Seventeenth century if memories of classes she took way back when are accurate. Did he take it because it held sentimental value or because it was probably worth more than her car?  
  
He’s not a sentimentalist, not like that, so she knows the answer. Hard to blame him. Why leave it here for rats or foolhardy teens ransacking this place on a dare to destroy?  
  
A few gaps in the bookshelves in his library tell her he took reading material as well. Alphabetically, she’s guessing Sartre, Proust, Milton – which strikes her as odd – Nietzsche, and the one absolute certainty – the second volume of Casanova’s memoirs. That bothers her for a reason she can’t put her finger on. She’ll realize months from now when she finally allows herself to buy a copy and read it again, but for now, it’s just the icy finger of unease tracing a cold path up her spine.  
  
_Tu oublieras aussi Henriette._  
  
No, she won’t forget any more than he will.  
  
Without thinking, she makes her way up the stairs, but it’s not his room where her feet take her. No, instead she finds herself in a room full of dolls… and the echo of words that will never mean anything from any man ever again.  
  
_”I love you.”_  
  
If she’d hoped to find Rafael’s painting on the wall, disappointment is what she finds instead in the guise of the engraving of London it had briefly displaced. Angel might not be sentimental, but he knows damn well that  _she_  is.  
  
In the end, it’s all about power. He’s had centuries to learn how to drain it from the unwary.   
  
To drain it from  _Joyce._  
  
The engraving is ever-so-slightly askew and it’s… annoying. He’s always so precise that she’s actually shocked that he didn’t straighten it. Were the few seconds the task would have taken somehow too precious to spare? Because Joyce has, admittedly, an almost psychotic need for artwork to be hung just so. One of the occupational hazards of owning a gallery, she supposes, or maybe it’s some sort of compensatory mechanism for never being able to straighten her own life, to make it perfect and symmetrical.  
  
Well, even if no one but her will ever see it again, she can’t stop herself from adjusting the engraving.   
  
The moment she touches it, an envelope falls from behind it.  
  
Before she even picks it up, she knows it was put there for her. Damn him. He was sure… too sure…  
  
She retrieves it anyway, even if she wants to slap him for his confidence in her eventual appearance in this room… but she doesn’t open it. No, to her own amazement, she puts it in her purse… and leaves.   
  
Out the door and then to her car and with each step she understands herself less. But she doesn’t turn around and she doesn’t go back.  
  
The envelope sits in her purse as she drives… as she keeps driving… past Willy’s… past the darkened and quiet Bronze and the bustling Espresso Pump… past the gallery. She just drives aimlessly, afraid to stop, but eventually she screws up her courage and heads home.  
  
Home. She’s not sure what it even means anymore, except that this is where she’s a mother – and that’s the one thing that means everything, isn’t it? It’s the one thing she almost lost forever, the one thing she could  _still_  lose.  
  
She's pretty sure that Buffy will be at Willow’s for awhile yet, but Joyce doesn’t take chances – at least not right now – and so she heads upstairs to her bedroom and closes the door. Deep breath and then another and she pulls the envelope from her purse.  
  
There are two thick pieces of paper inside and she unfolds them. The one on top is a drawing.  
  
It’s her – curled up in the chair in the living room sound asleep… naked. Joyce’s breath catches in her throat. He’s definitely watched her, knows her routine, and he’s thrusting their intimacy into the one place that was sacred and she wants to slap him more than she ever wanted to before and she should tear this drawing to pieces, but…  
  
But she’s beautiful here – the way he sees her. She knows it’s not real, this magically sensual and lovely version of her, but for a man to see her that way… just once…  
  
God damn it! Why did it have to be  _him_?  
  
_”I love you.”_  
  
Will she ever stop hearing those words in that voice?   
  
Does Buffy hear them too?   
  
Who was he? The vampire her daughter loves? Joyce knows he was nothing like the one who had her in his bed… his kitchen… in the bed of the creature who murdered Kendra.   
  
Has it really been less than two months since all this reality came tumbling out from behind the fairy tale she’d once thought was the truth? Since her little girl was transformed before her eyes into something powerful and important and heroic… and terrifying?  
  
_”You walk out of this house, don’t even think about coming back.”_  
  
Oh god. If only that was the worst thing, the most heartless of all Joyce’s acts of betrayal… If her daughter knew the truth…  
  
But what is the truth anyway?  
  
There’s still a second page, isn’t there? It’s a letter. Joyce holds it in trembling hands, takes a deep breath, and prepares to…  
  
Just then, there’s the sound of the front door and teenage footsteps again familiar. “Mom?”  
  
Oh no! Home early. Joyce shoves the pages back in the envelope and hides it under her mattress before heading downstairs, a motherly smile on her face. “Hi, honey. Did you have a good time at Willow’s?”  
  
Buffy says, “Yes,” but her eyes are sad and full of clouds.  
  
There are so many things Joyce wants to say, but she’s afraid – afraid that she’ll slip and say that one wrong word, reveal one small detail she shouldn’t,  _couldn’t_  know and lose the only thing she has – so she contents herself with reaching out and touching Buffy’s cheek. “What do you say? Want to make it a movie night?”  
  
“Nothing with horror in it. Or romance. Or men.” Buffy half-smiles as she speaks, but it doesn’t come anywhere near to reaching her eyes and it’s the most heartbreaking thing Joyce has ever seen. She did this. She put this anguish there.  
  
She wants to grab Buffy and hold her close and promise her that she’ll never let anything hurt her again. Of course she doesn’t. Why doesn’t she? “Thelma and Louise it is.”   
  
As she heads to the kitchen to pop the popcorn and dish up some ice cream – to hell with dinner – she knows two things. One: that she loves her daughter. More than anything. More than Fook Island or art or seeing herself as beautiful in someone else’s eyes – more than all of those things put together. More than everything. And someday she’ll figure out how to do it right, to be the mother Buffy deserves. All she needs is time.   
  
Two: that there’s an envelope upstairs she will never open again, a letter she won’t –  _can’t_  – read.  
  
The smell of popcorn fills the kitchen. “Mom? Want me to start the movie?”  
  
“Just a second, honey.” Just give her time. Please, God, just give her the chance and she’ll be… everything she should have been already. She’ll fix this. Somehow.   
  
He’s gone now. Can’t it just be as if he were never there? Or at least…   
  
For the second time in as many weeks, Joyce is praying.  
  
She takes the tray of goodies to the coffee table and sits down beside her daughter… who lays her head against Mommy’s shoulder. As she softly strokes Buffy’s hair, she hears those words again, but this time they’re in the voice that really matters, and this time she says them back:  
  
”I love you.”  
  
For the second time in as many weeks, Joyce’s prayers are answered.  
  
  
  
The End.


End file.
